NotJayTabb

@joeg Sorry about the delay, picked this fun sub-10 minute Jack Gallagher match

Of the two matches @HeadCheese gave me, I decided to go for the Verne Gagne/Red Bastein match, felt like it was more outside of my comfort zone, something I probably wouldn't seek out normally. I thought it would be a fun curio, but I actually ended up really enjoying it. All the matwork felt purposeful and all the counters felt earned. I loved the opening headscissors spot, with Bastein repeatedly struggling to escape and getting caught with another headscissors upon escaping, until he wises up and avoids a 4th to send Gagne tumbling to the floor. Gagne has a size advantage, so even a hiptoss looks like a big shot on the skinnier Bastein, and I thought the commentary really helped tell the story of the match. By pointing out Gagne's size advantage and the problems Bastein was up against, it meant Red looked good even in defeat. Neat stuff.

@Boss Rock Possible recency bias, as I only saw this for the first time yesterday, but this is pretty neat.

Be a shame if Haste does go, he always felt like the TMDK member with a higher ceiling, felt like he had more personality than Nick Miller. I guess the rumours of him teaming with an incoming Jonah Rock were premature.

Riddle is a guy I forever feel like I'm playing catch up with. The first time I saw him wrestle was also the only time I saw him live was when WCPW stupidly booked him as a surprise opponent for generic bland heel Alex Gracie's open challenge, and it ended up being the only truly bad Riddle match I've seen (and I don't put that down to him). Since then, every Riddle match I've seen has impressed me more and more, and I though this was really fun. Felt like an interesting parallel of two charismatic natural athletes, who'd both come to wrestling via other sports, both had simple catchy chants ("Bro" vs "Moose") and both came in carrying some gold, and the commentary putting this over as a battle of two alpha males felt accurate. Really liked it when Riddle took the submissions route against Moose, at times he was all over him like a spider trapping his prey in a web, and it felt like that would be his best route to success. Both nailed some big shots, some of Moose's kicks to the face in particular looked nasty, but thankfully nothing too big just got shrugged off and I liked the fact that Moose kept trying for a discus clothesline that he never hit, it put the move over as a killer blow as Riddle was always desperate to avoid it. Riddle's rolling gutwrenches looked really impressive on a guy that size. If I had a small complaint, Riddle hit a few too many big moves towards the end that should have finished it, but at least he sold exhaustion on the mat after the Canadian Destroyer so Moose didn't have to kick out of it. The end was predictable from the moment both guys came out carrying belts from other promotions, but I really enjoyed this.

Reminds me of the line in Foley's second book about how Undertaker got a bigger pop doing a dive twice a year than Essa Rios did doing one every week because it meant more when Taker did it.

@HeadCheese Decided to go for some WCW 90s TV gold for you

Just watched the Volador Jr/La Sombra vs Negro Casas/Heavy Metal match Matt D selected for me. Though I'm not fully integrated with lucha, these are four guys I've seen a fair bit of in some form or other, with Casas making my top 10 back in the GWE, so I had high hopes for this. Really liked how aggressive everyone felt in this match. Sometimes, I find lucha can be a bit airy (and don't get me wrong, I'm fully appreciative of a good lucha brawl), but here it felt like everyone was laying in their stuff, especially when Casas and Volador were in the ring together. I particularly loved Heavy Metal nailing a vicious dropkick in the corner during the second fall. It's almost redundant to say this in 2018, where he is still having good matches, but a 49yr old Casas looks tremendous throughout this, moving fluidly, nailing a lovely clothesline to a seated Volador on the apron, and flashing a massive grin after catching Volador with a boot to the face on a moonsault. Volador and Sombra maybe stood out less, but I think that's because of how much fun Metal and Casas were rather than their own faults. With his flared trousers and his movement, Volador did come across as a masked Fandango, but I really like Dango anyway, so that's no bad thing. Plenty of highlights in the bout - loved the top rope press slam hit by Metal in the first fall, loved the only natural "legdrop to wrestler hung up in ropes" spot, as Metal grabs on to avoid a Hamrick bump only for Volador to hit a Fandango-esque (see!) top rope legdrop on him. The third fall saw everyone bump like loons, with big dives a plenty and Metal eating a big hiptoss to the floor. By the end, I had a big grin on my face, great stuff here.

Both HHH and Ziggler had a spell where they used a sleeper as their secondary finisher

Based on Tim Evans's most recent posts, he seems to have seen a load of different wrestling, but especially a lot of indy wrestling. I'm pretty sure he won't have seen this, one of my favourite matches I've seen live. Featuring a tiny teenage Tyler Bate

I think you pretty much enjoyed it for the reasons I chose it: namely seeing poor Geraint Clewd get massacred and the huge reaction Bandito gets from the crowd. I loved his autobiography too, his blind faith in Mason Ryan made me a fan to the extent that Ryan is one of only two wrestlers I've paid to have a photo taken with at a show. Catching up with my reviews with the UWA 6-man that Jetlag chose for me. I'm an amateur when it comes to lucha, I'm still in that stage where I find some of it a bit choreographed and difficult to get to grips with, but on the other hand I adore the likes of Casas and Santo. I found this match really easy to sit though, there was a grace and fluidity of movement that belied some of the athletes involved - I know that Super Porky is a robust guy, but the other Brazos aren't exactly svelte, yet they move around so nicely. I loved how excited the commentators seemed to get when Porky was in the ring, uttering his name repeatedly. I really liked how wrestlers seemed to be able to find a takeover or a reversal from anywhere, often arms are getting hooked suddenly into an armdrag, and the dive train rightly ends with the bulk of Porky flying though the ropes. Really neat match that reaffirms that I need to watch more lucha - looking forward to the match Matt D chose me last week.

I haven't. I don't watch anywhere near as much lucha as I intend to, so I'm excited about this.

I'm currently on holiday, so will review the lucha six man from last week in the next day or two when I get home. In the meantime, here's my match for Matt D, some 1987 Reslo.

This is the match Boss Rock chose for me in week one https://rutube.ru/video/630a7005c6882e692f3454ef3b9d5f00/ Fuminori Abe vs Takuya Nomura - BJPW I went into this knowing nothing about either guy, and not really knowing what to expect, bar Boss Rock describing it as a hard hitting sprint. I came out of it really impressed with both men, but especially with Abe. He not only looked good offensively, but I thought his selling was really on point too. There's a point in this about 5 minutes in, where they've mostly been working each other on the mat, wearing the other down, when suddenly Nomura hits him with a slap and a couple of big kicks, and Abe just crumples to the mat. It feels like a really big moment, the sudden burst of violence after how evenly match they seemed on the mat, and Abe's selling really puts over how rocked he is. There's another moment later on where Nomura catches a kick to the head and uses the leg to yank Abe to the mat, holding a kind of backwards single leg crab, and Abe is frantic, clawing at the ref and trying to fight off his need to tap out, and again it makes it feel like a big moment. The match story is simple but effective, as they work evenly at the start to try create openings to throw bigger bombs, with a hurt leg slowing the opponent down just enough to sneak in a kick. As the match wears on, both men look less steady on their feet, which makes them throw big strikes more readily, with the opponent less likely to stop it. Both men sell the effects of the fight throughout, and by the time we get to the final submission, it feels right, it's come at the right time. A ten minute sprint is perfect for this type of match, going much longer wouldn't be credible. Really enjoyed this.

That was always going to be the danger with that match. At least I was right in thinking it was a match you'd enjoy. I'll swap it with this one, pretty good chance you won't have seen it previously.

I checked out Microstatistics's Greatest Match Ever list, and saw Bret/Owen was top 5 and Bret/Bulldog was in there too. There's a decent chance you'll already have seen this, but it's a good bedfellow to those two matches.

Maybe I've got a weakness for mouth guard wearing wrestlers, but I've got Shayna Baszler and Pete Dunne battling for the top spot. Both have kept knocking out good match after good match all year, working a convincing level of stiffness without letting their matches go into overkill (we'll ignore Wargames for Pete). They're the two wrestlers I'll go out of my way to see.

I remember thinking, up until the Alexa Bliss interference, that Nia/Rousey was very good, pretty hard hitting.

Almas/Gargano still feels pretty untouchable to me. It's been top of my list all year and hasn't come close to moving. Special mention to Fred Yehi vs Cain Justice from the first Action Wrestling show. Just a beautifully worked match

"MAMMA F'ING MIA' Yeah, Mauro is just the worst, a man who manages to take me out of the matches by shoehorning in terrible references or yelling like a lunatic. Really makes me appreciate just how good the NXT pairing of Phillips and Graves were, they had an easy chemistry, told the match stories nicely and got excited at the right times.

Nia's wild punch was definitely reckless and should receive some punishment, but people on Twitter calling for her immediate sacking is a bit much. Seth Rollins managed to injure the Universal champion, cave in the nose of the company's biggest star and end Sting's career, and didn't receive this level of abuse. Plus, I felt the Vega injury was more on Tamina for totally failing to catch her

For real, the card is sneakily really good. AJ had one of Brock's best matches last year, Becky/Ronda should be a blast, AoP/Bar is going really under the radar but should be awesome, and I'm always a sucker for the elimination matches. Plus Ali/Murphy! Genuinely looking forward to the PPV

He's the brother of Johnny Ace and Road Warrior Animal, so you may see a family resemblance. He was the least successful Laurenitis brother, Marc, though he did work an AJPW tour in 87 as Tom Zenk's partner in the RWTL

This is an incredible watch. Bless Tom Burton still playing to a non existent crowd. That's a professional. "Press the button, Greg!"

Word is that Vega is nursing an injury after landing badly in the Evolution Battle Royal, so I wouldn't read too much into her absence