NotJayTabb

Only had time to check out Asuka/Dana before work today, but that was a really fun competitive squash. I'm pleased they didn't just totally job Dana out, instead presenting it as "Dana is good, but Asuka is simply better". Wasn't a huge fan of Dana doing a handstand moments after Asuka had worked over her arm, but that's nitpicking. The match also featured my favourite ever use of a "You F*cked Up!" chant

The Table For 3 with Owens, Cesaro and Ambrose is pretty fun, enjoyed some of their travel stories from the indie days. Not sure how much of this was him trying to stay in character, but Ambrose eats like a pig.

Well, Red has a nomination thread in the GWE folder, so he's got his supporters. There is a parallel with Mysterio, in that both were super-dynamic high-fliers who suffered knee injuries that caused them to slow down and become smarter workers. That said, much as I like Red, he's no Mysterio. Rey is a guy who could have good TV matches with anyone, and generally did over a 10yr+ WWE career. I mean, Red once got something watchable out of Petey Williams which is a feat in itself, but it's not a close comparison.

Stupidly, I underestimated train times, and elected to go and watch Coventry lose to Bury on Saturday, thinking I'd be home in time for kick-off. When it became clear I wouldn't be, I got my girlfriend to record it and went through a Likely Lads-esque mission to avoid hearing anyone talking about the game and ignoring the buzzing of my phone (which thankfully ran out of battery on my tram ride home). Such an incredible match, probably the best game I can remember watching.

I'd love it if the WWE decided to make both Rotunda brothers into cult leaders of very different sorts of stables. I can see that being the kind of inside joke Vince loved. Giving Bo a stable of white-clad failed lower mid-carders as his Bolievers would be the perfect ying to Bray Wyatt's yang. You've got guys like Axel, Fandango, Sandow, Slater all as talented guys doing nothing at all....heck, you could even labour the joke by making a returning Rowan into a Boliever.

Given that the Rugby World Cup is Pro Wrestling, I'd book the upcoming Bayley/Sasha iron-woman match exactly like Wales/England. Valiant, likable face vs smug, over-confident heel. In the first half of the match, which has been close, the heel suddenly takes the lead. Despite this, she's not able to put her opponent away for another fall to kill the match off, with the face still going toe-to-toe with her. Early in the second half of the match (about 15-16 mins in), the face suddenly suffers a nasty injury, but fights on with guts and determination, winning the hearts of all-remaining neutrals. From out of nowhere, the face lands one big blow to level things up, sending the crowd into a frenzy. Even more amazingly, with 7 minutes left the face takes the lead! Despite this, with 4 mins left,the twists aren't over, as the heel gets the face in a prone situation. She could lock in a submission for a quick fall to level things up, but instead goes for a high-risk move that backfires, as the sheer will-to-win of the face causes her to get back up one more time and drive the heel out of the ring. The bell goes to show the end of the match, as the face stands tall. Match of the year! Match of the year!

For me, Regal. I love both in the ring, but Regal's got more range as an all-round performer. Not only is he the better promo, but he's able to portray so many different roles whilst still being the same character. He's as believable as the fired-up face defending a helpless Eugene as he is as the megalomaniacal GM/King of the Ring, yet still authentic stooging about in disgust dressed as Paul Birchall's pirate wench. No matter what he's doing, he's an entertaining presence on TV. Finlay just isn't as magnetic, despite being a surprisingly effective face in the role of Hornswoggle's protector.

Asuka's debut is one of those times I wish I'd not impatiently read the spoilers to find out about her debut. Everything I read basically said "Emma and Dana taunted her, Asuka left the ring looking sad", whereas the reality (Asuka turns round with a slightly sadistic smile, Emma and Dana look concerned in the ring) makes me think the heels have just signed their own death warrant. All in on Dawson/Wilder too. Such a good team, love the way they really seem to get tag psychology. Don't think any heel team in NXT cuts the ring off as well as they do, plus they've got a great finisher.

They really should have kept him as a face. Vamp was getting really over in early 2000 by looking competitive against Flair and Luger, plus teaming with Sting, and he could easily have been their new homegrown face star (homegrown in as much that most fans in the US would only know him from WCW and not be aware of his lucha background). Turning him heel and adding in all the supernatural bullshit really ruined him.

As a main event, absolutely. If they decide not to put Reigns in the main event this year, however, an upper-midcard feud with Sheamus would actually work out really well for Reigns. Not only would the match be excellent, a potential MOTN, but Sheamus is one of the few guys guaranteed not to get cheered over Roman.

The description of Paige as a "force of personaility" in her turn the other night is accurate, but also shows the big problem they're going to have in making sure she gets the right reactions. Namely that the faces she's just turned on are pretty much lacking in that department. As able as Charlotte and (especially) Becky are in ring, they've not really connected with the audience, and especially not as much as Paige, who is arguably the most over face in the divas division (Banks comes close, but isn't supposed to be a face). It doesn't help that the points she was making are, rightly or wrongly, points the crowd will agree with. Becky IS largely irrelevant, Summer HAS gone from wrestling to catfighting with Lana over men. How much influence John Cena had over Nikki Bella's title reign is unknown, but a large part of the audience will also believe that's the case, especially as Total Divas ensures that even the casual fan will know about their relationship. The fact Paige left to cheers instead of boos isn't surprising. It actually reminds me of 12 months ago at Survivor Series, where Paige was on a heel team against 4 utter no-mark faces who the crowd didn't care about (as I recall, Emma/Fox/Naomi/Natalya) and, even before she was left in a 4-1 situation, the crowd were cheering for her. She's actually retired, which makes this even more ridiculous.

In sad BritWres news, Kris Travis has just announced his retirement on Twitter. He'd made his comeback 2 months ago after conquering stomach cancer, but he's had to cancel a few booking in the past week and has obviously had some medical advise that he can't wrestle again. Really sad, as he was a heck of a wrestler and could easily have transferred that onto an international stage. His matches with Devitt and Masters in PCW were both really well received and Project Ego (his tag team with Martin Kirby) have been arguably the UK's best tandem in the last couple of years. Massive shame, hopefully he's able to return to good health soon.

Only really started giving this serious thought in June, but my working top 3 since then has been Hansen, Bret and Mysterio, but I'm not able to put an order to it. There are different periods of their careers I want to explore further which may help sort out the order (Hansen in PR, Bret in Stampede/Japan, Mysterio in Mexico)

PN News carved himself a fine niche in Europe as Cannonball Grizzly, and was perfectly fine in ring. I think gaining more ring experience and shedding the horrible rap gimmick helped.

Strangely, for all the talk of it not being a masculine form of music, in my experience cars that are pumping out booming techno are generally driven by #LADs, who gather in groups in the car park of my local supermarket and would probably hit me with an empty WKD Blue bottle for wearing a Smiths t-shirt.

The thing with heel Bret is that for most of the world he never turned heel following the WM13 match with Austin. The Hart Foundation's anti-USA rhetoric kept them face with the rest of the world. You can see how popular they were in Canada at Canadian Stampede, and they were still getting cheered in Europe in mid-late 97 (helped by being paired against a natural heel in Michaels). For someone like myself, who didn't watch WCW in 97/98, and started watching again in 99, Bret didn't turn heel until NWO 2000, and that lasted 3 weeks before he retired.

A combination of work, part time college and a 6 hour round trip to pick up the dog from the vet has meant I've not been able to get involved in this. However, I've got this afternoon off work, so I'm looking forward to getting stuck in.

Always liked Mikey, was watching a "best of" comp the other day, and it reminded me how good he was in his role. Just took some fun ragdoll bumps, had suitably weak offence in his early days and realistically progressed into being an actual credible performer. Oddly, I think one of my favourite Mikey matches is his bout with Kidman from Uncensored 99. He seemed to relish being the larger, more physically imposing wrestler for a change, and just bullied Kidman, including a nasty bump into the steel railings. Dick Cruiserweight Bully Mikey Whipwreck feels like yet another missed opportunity in WCW. If I was submitting my top 100 now, he'd probably make the cut, but there's a lot of guys I need to do due diligence on that'll probably see him drop off.

I really feel like Barrett would make a good partner for Neville at the moment. Aside from both being British, Barrett is a brawler to go with Neville's high flier, he's a great promo and, given the way he was written off TV, he'd have a plausible reason to want to side with Neville against the Cosmic Wasteland. Barrett has been a heel for 5 years now, and a face turn would freshen him up, especially as fans wanted to join in with his "I'm afraid I've got some bad news" sctick.

1. Tyler Bate - heard he went down a storm at King of Trios this weekend, which came as no surprise to someone who has seen him grow as a wrestler over the past two years. Was watching a match he had against Jay Lethal that was really good, and I'm no Lethal fan. Still only 18ys old, astonishing 2. Jim Breaks - My favourite discovery from the GWE project. When he starts complaining, he's like the cantankerous next-door neighbour from a 70's sitcom, and I love it. Then he wrestles, and my word how he wrestles. 3. Jack Starz - Every time I've seen him, he's been excellent, and on Saturday I saw him have two great matches in the space of an hour. He's in great shape, has a unique look and I'm certain he's going to break out in the UK scene this year. 4. Jerry Blackwell - Another guy who I'd not seen before the GWE. He's a massive fat bloke who moves deceptively well, has great "vulnerable monster" selling and looks like a brute. What's not to love? 5. Fandango - Big fan of face Fandango, his moveset is much more suited to being a face. I do feel kinda sad for him hurling himself out of the ring onto Adam Rose for a minor pop, but I cheered.

Went to my second Legacy Wrestling show at the weekend, where they were crowning their first British Heavyweight champion. I was pretty happy to see the crowd significantly up on last time, and much more into the show, which is a heartening sign for a formative company. The tournament boasted a strong line up, not necessarily the biggest names in the UK, but quite a good mix of talent (including the recently, randomly PWI500 placed Kay Jutler). It also featured three examples of my favourite type of wrestler - massive bearded fat men who wrestle like monsters (in this case both Henchmen, Jim Diehard and Benton Destruction, and the debuting Bison Brody). MVP of the night was undoubtedly Robbie Brookside trainee Jack Starz, who had two great matches in the space of an hour. First he took on local worker Will Collins in a great match. Collins is pretty green, but makes up for it by being a natural athlete and impressively strong. There was a great spot where Starz had him in a tree of woe, ready for a top rope stomp, only for Collins to sit up and throw him across the ring. Got a great crowd reaction. They ran a story here where Collins had hurt his back slamming big Benton Destruction in the first round, but as he relied a lot on his power, he was forced to grit through it to hurt Starz. However, he fatally missed a top rope splash and Starz put him in a single-leg Liontamer (complete with knee to the back of the head) for the tapout. The final was also pretty good, considering both Starz and JD Knight were on their third match of the night. However Starz had squashed underdog Arcade in 3 mins in his first round match, so was in better overall nick than Knight, plus had had a longer break before the final. Still, this was a really close, heated final before Starz locked in the Liontamer for the tapout. Really great show, they've got a nice bit of momentum building.

Her theme is Big Cass singing the theme tune to The Price Is Right. Basically, she turned up as a jobber that Cass and Enzo had chosen to put over Carmella, but got ridiculously over, in part because Cass only referred to her as Blue Pants, instead of giving her a name. A few weeks later, they brought her back (where she beat Carmella due to being distracted by Enzo) and Cass sang the song for her intro to play upon her bizarre cult popularity. The fact they used this recording to be her regular theme song is odd, but hilarious.

The repeated bludgeoning of Buck Zumhofe is my favourite on-going joke in this project.

I say this as a fan of the guy, but Kay Jutler is a really random BritWres guy to crop up in the lower part of the list. What on earth is up with some of the names in this? Johnny Fandango? Bram Cameron? Brutus Magnus? Mike Mizanin? The first two are some bizarre mix of the names they've used in the past, the other two haven't gone under those names in over 5 years. So odd.

I found myself in a position 5 years back where I was probably at my most "casual" in terms of viewership since becoming a smart fan. Basically just watching Raw and Impact if I could be bothered to catch them. Then I found a big box of tapes when I went home and helped my mum clear out her garage, and thought it'd be nice to give them a watch. Thing is, I know I'm easily distracted and that I'd be watching a tape and would start playing with my phone or throwing some toy for the dog, so I decided to start blogging about it. My thinking was that it'd force me to actually pay attention to what was happening on screen and to see if I could still be bothered watching a load of wrestling. The end result was that looking at it like this reminded me why I liked wrestling and really re-ignited my enthusiasm for it. To be honest, I saw myself flaking out after a month or two, but I'm still doing it now and still enjoying it. My big aim was to avoid long pages of play-by-play, which can be a bit overwhelming and not much fun to write, but to write about how I felt about the match as a whole, so that also made me look at what it was I was enjoying/not enjoying about each match. I've pretty much given up on writing about shows I've been to, as I realised I'd rather just go to shows and have fun than be hyper-critical of each match, but analysing matches at home has made me realise what I like in wrestling and has helped me discover more stuff that I like.