NotJayTabb

Well, I for one am glad to see this back off hiatus. Mainly because I really want to see who finally dethrones Tully.

Yeah, the overuse of imports really bugs me with some promotions. PCW and Southside do it a lot, and it can get to a stage of overkill. I remember last year Southside ran a show just up the road from my house, and almost every match had an import in, normally going over the UK guy. Like, the card had Chris Sabin, James Storm, Johnny Gargano, Andrew Everett, Candice LaRae, Joey Ryan and X-Pac all either beating a UK guy or just facing another import. Only Zema Ion lost to a regular, and that's only because Mark Haskins was the champion. The matches were all ok, but who on that list of names realistically will have sold a ticket? X-Pac, maybe Storm? Who benefited from LaRae beating Nixon Newall in the worst match I've seen Newall have? What purpose did Joey Ryan handily beating Ryan Smile serve? It's no coincidence that my favourite BritWres companies, like TXW or HOPE, fill their cards with UK guys and generally have better shows. TXW got more value out of Rob Terry than Southside did with a card full of non-ticket-selling US indy darlings.

I think 2-3 hours is about right. I think that meets the right margin of getting your moneys worth vs overstaying your welcome. The last show I went to was the BEW/Stardom show in London, which was great but there were 2 30-40 minute intervals for meet-and-greets, which were interminable for someone like me who was on their own, standing, low on phone battery and checking their watch because of knowing I still had a 3 hour drive back to Nottingham ahead of me.

I always thought Repo Man was unfairly lumped in with a load of Wrestlecrap. Barry Darsow didn't have a great physique and was a ratty looking man who was already under contract, so I think this was the perfect role for him. Darsow played the role to the hilt as well, so this minor lower-card character became wholly entertaining and memorable. That has to be considered a success.

Was quite interested to spot Regal had chimed in on the "controversy" “I watched the match and was shocked. You need to start doing real stuff like people from my era like kip ups,flying head scissors,cart wheels and criss crosses. Get a grip! When I started the job in ’83 a lot of the older fellas used to say that Marc Rocco and Marty Jones (who were the real pioneers of the CW style) had killed the business because they did to much. Although they may not admit it anymore, most of the heavyweights in Europe thought the brilliant lightweight and middleweight wrestlers were bad for the job because their style was “not believable enough”.. Every country I worked in before I came to the US had different styles and ways of doing things.As long as there’s effort then it’s right.If the people paying you are happy and you get reactions then make your stuff as good as it can be with what skills you have.May not be for everyone but that’s ok.In the match I saw two fellas who looked like fighters having an excellent,hard competed match in a different style.Win win!”

I think Savage taking money out of Vince's pocket by taking the Slim Jim's sponsorship to WCW with him is a more realistic cause of the split than the Savage/Steph rumour.

Hopefully this leads to the return of the Bragging Rights show as a Network special. I always liked the dynamic of teams that didn't really get on, but would try and put their differences aside for one night. Something about heel Jericho and face Matt Hardy celebrating together with their winner trophy in 09 made me quite happy.

I'm perfectly happy for New Day to keep the tag title as long as possible, as it delays the inevitable Enzo & Cass title reign. It's odd, because part of me gets why they're so popular (people like to chant along with wrestlers) and another part just doesn't understand why (because they're obnoxious loudmouth arseholes). Cassady in particular is a lousy promo - the "spell it out for you" spiel used to be Enzo's bit, but I think they gave it to Cass because everything else he says sounds terrible. Before the Payback aborted match, he cut some dreadful promo about Hey Arnold that made no sense and would be torn apart if given by another wrestler. The only time I ever liked these two is when they debuted in NXT and got squashed weekly by Mason Ryan. But, they're massively popular. They're going to win the tag title and probably hold it for a long time. I've come to accept it, though it doesn't mean I'm going to like it

Watching some old C-shows from 2014, it's really interesting to see just how average AJ was compared to a lot of the roster, especially when you watch people like Layla or Alicia Fox managing to get watchable stuff out of the Funkadactyls. It came to the point when I was watching tiny AJ barrel over Natalya with clotheslines that I realised she was having a worse match with Nattie than Aksana did a month earlier.

Shirai/KLR was probably split 2/3 in favour of Kay Lee. Iwatani was cheered in her first round match against a heel, but Nixon was heavily favoured in the second round match. Hojo was pretty much unanimously cheered. We also got a Heidi Katrina match, unadvertised, against a tiny Italian wrestler (Laura DeMatteo?) who was less than physically imposing. Totally forgettable, other than them badly blowing a tilt-a-whirl spot (where Katrina stood in the middle of the ring, waiting to grab an opponent who was supposed to run towards her, but instead stood still....then eventually decided to run into the move)

Fully agree, that's why it'll be interesting to see how the Roman matches compare when AJ gets to feud with another good/great wrestler

It'll be interesting to see at the end of the year how the Roman matches compare with other matches Styles will have in the next 6 months. For all the talk about Roman "holding up his end" of matches, Brock and the Big Show didn't have better matches with anyone else in 2015, and Reigns has had much better matches with AJ than Jericho did.

Yeah, the queues for the Shirai/Hojo/Iwatani meet-and-greet was pretty big, and Ogawa was at the head of that (in a boss-looking "Rossy Ogawa" jacket), so I think he'll have seen how popular the Stardom product is over here.

So did anyone else make it to the show last night? Thought it was a really good show, albeit maybe a touch long. Having two 40 minute intervals was a bit much, and the local guys elimination match, though not bad, felt like it was playing to an audience who weren't that invested in it. Still, some really great matches: thought Shirai vs KLR was the standout, they both took some nutty bumps and it felt like a real war. Loved Nixon vs Iwatani too, thought it was a really great night for Nixon. She had three good-great matches throughout the card, she's really improved from the first time I saw her. Female/Hojo vs Storm/Black was a fun squash match, and I loved that submission that ended the lucha match. Liked the venue too, due to it's small size I ended up stood at the bar all night, meaning I had to quickly move as Alpha Female hurled Dahlia Black into the spot where I was stood. Top night.

I love Charles Robinson as a ref. He's really good at not being noticeable, until the referee gets bumped and the fact it doesn't look terrible makes you realise it's Robinson in there. He never does things to distract from the match, and the fact he's been around for nearly 20years is still great is testament to him. Plus he had one of the few good referee matches, vs Gorgeous George of all people in WCW

Zack Sabre Jr placed at #327 this time around, and he's only really been getting US bookings for a year or two, so I can see him placing higher in 10 years. As a wildcard, Mark Andrews wasn't nominated this time, but he's been at worst "good" for 4 years now, crops up a lot in places with good online presence like Progress and Attack!, plus is primarily based in the US so has the scope to get more eyes on him than other BritWres guys. Plus he's only 24, so time is on his side.

Looks like Adam Rose isn't far off joining him. Has been charged with domestic battery and tampering with a witness - all this whilst on 60 day suspension. Doesn't look too promising for him.

I was thinking about the lineage of NXT title, and how in the last batch of champions had been all big name indy guys (Neville>Zayn>Owens>Balor>Joe) and how interesting a Round Robin NXT champs tournament would be, then it suddenly hit me that one of the matches would be Big E vs Joe, and man I really want to see that match.

Given the fact that she's already had a WWE.com interview (plus the fact that she's great), I can see them debuting Nikki Storm and giving her a push from the off very soon too

Alicia Fox has a great looking Northern Lights suplex, always gets a terrific bridge on it

Friday night (06/05/14) saw HOPE Wrestling's biggest show of the year to date, headlined by a title match between champion Jack Jester and Martin Kirby. The late Kris Travis was a mainstay of the promotion and, though not explicitly stated, this title match for his long-time tag partner had a nice underlying feeling of tribute. Both guys are massively popular with the HOPE audience, so there was a 50/50 split in the crowd, and the resulting match was excellent. Given Jester’s slight size advantage and the dominance of his reign, he was in control for a good portion of this match, with Kirby fighting from beneath and putting in enough hope spots to show he was still in it. The end saw Kirby kick out of Jester’s tombstone finisher, frustrating Jester to the point that he grabbed his trademark weapon (some kind of corkscrew) and looked to be thinking about using it. Instead he cast it aside, but the hesitation had allowed Kirby to recover and escape a second tombstone with a backslide for the huge win. Big pop for that, and really great to see a guy like Kirby win a title. He’s an outstanding performer, seems happy to work any role up and down the card, and is capable of having a good match with just about anyone. He’s so good at building heat that last summer Southside Wrestling was able to take a show featuring a Chris Hero/Tommy End match and headline it with Kirby vs a referee Joel Allen bout…and it got the biggest reaction of the night PLUS Kirby carried Joel to a decent bout. He’s got to be one of the most underrated wrestlers on the planet right now. The undercard was good too – CJ Banks became #1 contender to the title by winning a fun fourway match (in which Pete Dunne really shined), Ryan Smile and the constantly-improving Burchill had a really good match which saw Smile hit a pair of insane dives over the turnbuckles and El Ligero and Chris Tyler had a fun match where the “evil referee” subplot added to, rather than subtracted from, the bout. Really great show.

Oh man, decided to watch this last night and I agree, Camp WWE is utter tripe. Just painfully unfunny, bar the Sgt Slaughter bits which raised a small smile. It even looks terrible - Stone Cold is a queasy shade of off-white and someone seems to have submitted a drawing on Kevin von Erich in lieu of Triple H

Fandango is making TV regularly the past few weeks and has a promoted match for next week. Think he's safe for now

If the guy is getting big reactions, they should have at least run with him in some capacity. He wasn't even getting on the C-shows most weeks, he basically disappeared. Obviously, he couldn't do the Miz gimmick any more, but turning him into a comedy Macho Man spoof for a month then totally shunning him makes no sense. Worst case scenario if he doesn't stay over is you've got a guy with some name recognition to put other guys over. But on the rare occasions he does turn up, he still gets a reaction - just look at the pop he got in the Rumble pre-show match.

I think I read somewhere that Dillenger has a player/coach role in NXT, so he's probably in the perfect spot right now. You can pop him in the ring with anyone and he'll get a reaction, but he's also going to be comfortable putting people over. As said above, his prospects of long term employment look better than some of the guys who've "made it" to the main roster.