Kadaveri

Fucking hell Stephanie McMahon talking down to all the wrestlers like she's a school teacher was bad enough now she's a god issuing commandments from on high.

The context was the big storyline at the time was Seth Rollins betraying The Shield to join Triple H/The Authority, and Dean Ambrose trying to beat him up on every show. So Dean Ambrose vs. Seth Rollins was announced for the Battleground PPV, but on the show Seth Rollins won by forfeit after Triple H banned Ambrose from the arena so he couldn't make it to the ring. That video is from Raw the next day.

If you want an example when Paige went on Steve Austin's podcast in 2015 she told a "funny" story of Daniel Bryan awkwardly arriving at her parents promotion just as her dad and brother were beating up a trainee and hanging him out of a 4th floor window. She seemed to think this was hilarious though Austin wasn't laughing and changed the topic.

Goldust when he wasn't on drugs has to be up there for this century. His tag team with Booker T in 2002-03 had lots of really good matches, I prefer their team to any combination of the Smackdown Six in that same period. He was easily the better wrestler of the Rhodes Brothers team in WWE and I'd even say AEW as well.

On a happy note Sasha Banks is back watching her Mayumi Ozaki tapes again. Her stomping Asuka's hand to prevent the rope break was straight out of DreamRush 1992.

Asuka vs. Sasha was just getting into MOTYC territory for me then that ridiculous finish marred the whole thing. Why would you do that.

I was the only person to have this in my Top 100 for the Greatest Matches Ever poll last year (#82 to be exact) and have still never got round to putting down why I'm so massively high on this match. I'm going to rectify that now. The viciousness of the armwork has already been talked about, but I'd like to go into how perfect a choice this was in the context of this feud and their characterisation. Becky had debuted the previous year in NXT in a very stereotypical Irish all green outfit doing a river dancing outfit. In her interview on NXT TV on an earlier episode, she talked about how she was trying to please the fans and give them what they wanted, but wasn't really being herself. Not long after this, Sasha (who had just been dumped by Charlotte so is looking for a new ally as she never has the confidence to do anything on her own) convinces Becky to be her new protege, and together they are Team BAE. Becky's finisher up to this point had been the Bexploder Suplex, but soon after joining with Sasha (a submission wrestler) she shifts towards submissions, and soon debuts Dis-Arm-Her armbar. Sasha later wins the NXT Women's Championship from Charlotte Flair. In this feud, it's established that one of Sasha's character traits is she reacts to any perceived "betrayal" with extreme vindictiveness. Her promos against Charlotte those few months were full of very personal shots on her "daddy issues" and in their match at Takeover: R-Evolution especially, Sasha starts the match by chopping Charlotte, putting her in a figure-four headlock and woooing throughout. Merely winning isn't her motivation, she has to throw in some personal humiliation to punish those who betray her. After Sasha is champion, Becky (while still a heel) wins a #1 contender's match and challenges Sasha for her title. In a backstage interaction a few weeks before, Sasha goes after Becky's self-esteem telling her "Don't forget. I made you Becky." "You did not make me. I made me. Sasha I don't know how to put this, but I'm kind of a big deal." Becky confidently blurts back, not allowing Sasha to put her down like the little underling she wants her to be. This is followed up at their contract signing where Sasha cheapshots and beats down Becky, only for Becky to turn the tables and put Sasha in her armbar and force Sasha to tap! That moment sets up where this match with go, and how Sasha will take her vengeance. I should note at this point that this match is also the debut of the orange haired 'steampunk' Becky, which you can read as symbolising Becky finally breaking out on her own. This is biggest fight of her life, and she's not going to come out with a look designed to pander to the crowd, or the look associated with her time under Sasha. Once she's in the ring, her eyes are locked onto the entrance ramp, and if you pay attention to the ring during Sasha's entrance, not once does Becky keep her eyes off her. Pure focus on the task at hand. The match starts, and after exchanging some Dean-Eddie style pinfall reversals (which is a slight flaw in the match as it didn't really fit everything else), Becky quits that and goes straight for that armbar. Sasha rolls away and gives a mixed look of fear and hurt as she realises now Becky is deadly serious about tapping her out tonight. The announcer then recaps Becky's comments in an earlier interview saying "I still respect Sasha, I still think she's an exceptional character. But when you speak to Sasha, I don't think she respects Becky at all." Sasha charges at Becky to try and get back on the offensive, but each time Becky grabs a hold of her arm and continues to work at it. The second time around she hits Sasha with a beautiful armdrag that Ricky Steamboat would be proud of, straight into punishing Sasha's arm again. From this point on, the focus never slips, she is going to destroy Sasha's arm until she taps out just like she did in the contract signing. But take always all the character-driven nuances here, this is a babyface shine segment to open the match. Sasha is getting outmatched, and her only defense at the moment is to flee to the ropes, which she does again here. At this point we see Becky smirking with confidence while Sasha begs off. But here Becky makes the mistake, she allows her own arm to come lose as Sasha catches her stomp, and then violently yanks her shoulder down to the floor so Becky's face bounces off the apron. Cool spot! Becky holds her shoulder and grimaces in pain on the floor. The Arm-Snapping Battle has been joined! Keeping score on unique offense targeting the arm, we're now Becky 5 - Sasha 1. Sasha then drags Becky into the ropes and torments her by pulling her arm backwards over the top rope and sarcastically raising her other arm above her head in a 'victory' pose. She follows this up by taking the piss out of Becky's old metal-chick entrance tossing her hair back and forth. "She does it better anyway" Corey Graves comments. Mean. This is what makes this match special. Not only is the armwork technically proficient and interesting, it's all wrapped up in the personal nature of the feud. Like with Charlotte, Sasha is not out to just defeat Becky, she needs to punish her for leaving her by destroying her self-esteem. What better way to prove that "I made you Becky... I taught you everything you know, but I didn't teach you everything I know" than by beating Becky with Becky's own speciality, attacking opponent arms. A speciality Becky only really developed after she starting teaming with Sasha. This is what makes this match psychologically deeper than say, Tanahashi vs. Okada in 2013, which also had great armwork, but there wasn't that much more to it. They were just using it as tactic to win a pro-wrestling match. Each escalation of Becky and Sasha trying to snap each others arms isn't just about winning the match, it's a deeply personal and nasty psychological war stemming from one toxic insecure individual's desire to punish rejection, and another's determination to stand up to her. Now we're well into Sasha's heat section, which is one of the greatest heel heat sections in modern WWE, where the house style is heels get the crowd to hate them by being really boring lying around in chinlocks for ages, but really all it achieves is boring everyone. See for example Seth Rollins in 2015 or Kevin Owens title reign the next year. Dire stuff. Meanwhile 23 year old Sasha Banks is teaching a seminar in stellar heel work by just being interesting more than anything else. She hits Becky with an arms first neckbreaker, then instead of a boring stationary chinlock for a "resthold" she nastily pulls Becky's arms crossed behind her in a straightjacket choke and torments her across the ring in various ways like repeatedly slamming Becky's elbows in the mat while she's still in the hold. You want to keep watching to see what new nastiness Sasha is gonna come out with. And then we get this moment: You see? Sasha switches up one of regular spots, the double knees to the gut in the ropes, to target Becky's arm instead, and thereby displaying a greater understanding of psychology than 95% of WWE's current roster. This all goes on for a solid 6 minutes, Becky tries fighting back a few times but it's way too fleeting to really count as a hope spot. It's all Sasha on offense, and the longer it goes on, the more gratuitously cruel she gets. The commentators sound genuinely disturbed when Sasha wrenches Becky's arm backwards (video) and inhumanely uses her foot to bend her shoulder the wrong way backwards as far as she can. And just in the last seconds, you can just about hear her yell "HOW'S THAT BECKY HUH!?" before giving her a humilating slap across the face. There's a well-remembered spot in the later Bayley Brooklyn match where Sasha sarcastically imitates Bayley's tubemen before slapping her right in the face, but there's an even meaner one here when Sasha demeaningly grabs Becky by the chin and slaps her hard in the face while berating her, can't work out what she's saying this time unfortunately. The crowd is now chanting "Sasha's gonna kill you" as Sasha locks in a crucifix armbreaker and yells at Becky "You wanna make this hard? I'm gonna break your arm" and pay attention you'll see she even bites Becky's other arm at one point! If we include biting, Sasha is now 12-5 up in the unique offense targeting the arm score. Soon after though Becky powers up like Hulk Hogan breaking the camel clutch and drops Sasha on the mat, breaking the hold. Becky gets her comeback going here, throwing forearms and clotheslines and follows up with a big dropkick off the top turnbuckle. She doesn't noticeably sell her arm throughout this, I have that part criticised. I don't think it's a big deal because she only ever uses her right arm to hit Sasha with, and Sasha was working the left, but I still do agree this 30 seconds would be a bit better if Becky had acknowledged the damage in some way so this is another flaw in the match I'll identify. It's only a very minor one though as Becky starts selling her left arm immediately after this, noticeably slowing down with trying to use both arms to drag Sasha around and pulling with her right more. The fight now spills to the outside and Becky grabs Sasha's arm and yanks her shoulder first into the ring post to start her comeback against Sasha's arm. "We've got two ladies with bad arms" calls the announcer, as both wrestlers are clutching their arms trying to continue. Becky drags Sasha into the ring, locks Sasha's arm behind her back and then suplexes her straight onto her own arm, then lifts that same arm up, legdrops it while Sasha's still on the floor, and then transitions into a crazy move where she hyperextends Sasha's elbow with her feet! I don't know what you call that. Becky goes for another suplex, and even bothers to add the detail of wrapping Sasha's arm around her back again so she'll land on it, but this costs her as it buys Sasha another second to wriggle out of it and attempt her own. "I'm the baddest, not you!" she shouts in Becky's face, but now that taking that extra moment to berate Becky costs Sasha as it buys Becky enough time to counter her suplex attempt and roll Sasha up into her Dis-Arm-Her for the first time since the opening minute of the match. Sasha screams horrendously when she's in this hold (video). That look of fear she showed at the start of the match at the initial Dis-Arm-Her attempt is paid off. But alas, this doesn't work out as Becky hoped, and in the process of rolling Sasha into position they ended up quite close to the ropes, so Sasha is able to reach out and force the break before too much damage is inflicted. Becky looks absolutely despondent at having to break it. She almost had the biggest win in her life just there, but didn't quite hit it, and she may never get a chance like that again. Sasha cowardly begs off again (Sasha wrestles more like Flair than Charlotte ever does) as Becky tries to drag her away from the ropes, but then quickly stops begging off to throw Becky to the outside to buy herself a little time and get her arm working again. She then runs the ropes and hits a suicide dive on Becky, all while keeping her arm in a sling position against her chest! "One arm and all" the announcer calls it. But Becky powers up and lifts Sasha above her shoulders and slowly but surely she struggles with one arm to able to position Sasha in line to slam her into the steel steps, upon which both women collapse with their arms in sling positions. Becky rolls Sasha into the ring and climbs to the top turnbuckle to hit another big move. But her arm is troubling her, she takes a bit longer to reach the top than normal and pains everytime she tries lifting herself up with the left arm. This was a bad move, as Sasha now has time to charge up the ropes, hit Becky with a top-rope armbreaker and in one final sweet touch, puts her in her finishing Bank Statement submission hold, but adds in the detail of wrapping Becky's injured arm outside to hurt it more. Becky should have just kept going after Sasha's arm, but she lost her focus going for a big move when she wasn't able to climb the ropes quickly, but Sasha never lost sight of her goal of winning by destroying Becky's arm. The post-match is awesome stuff. Becky is lying in the corner sobbing, this was her big moment and she blew it. But the crowd serenades her to her feet by humming the guitar riff of her theme song. It really needs stating that Becky was not that over before this match, Sasha was getting cheered over in the introductions, but by the end of this 15 minute bout she felt like the most beloved babyface in all WWE. She's applauded as she takes to her feet and sinks in the moment for a while, before slowing leaving the arena, left-arm in an invisible sling as the crowd continues to sing her song. Sasha on the other hand, berates the dumb referee for trying to raise her left arm in victory when it'd just been crippled. Did you even watch the match ref!? The unique use of technically solid armwork to advance a broken mentor-protege relationship storyline is a match narrative that's 5 Star worthy, although there are some other flaws that hold me back from going that high. Bayley vs. Sasha at Brooklyn would soon surpass it, but at the time, this was the greatest women's match in the history of WWE. Probably in all of North American wrestling for that matter. It's an essential stepping stone in the road that would lead to these two women becoming major stars and Becky Lynch even main eventing Wrestlemania a mere four years later (absolutely unthinkable at the time). ****1/2 Final Score in the unique offense targeting the arm war was Sasha 15 - Becky 10. Becky 1. Twisting arm on collar elbow tie up. 2. Fujiwara Armbar 3. Shirome Armbar/Dis-Arm-Her 4. Thigh stamp to the arm 5. Armdrag 6. Pulling shoulder into ringpost 7. Standing arm yank 8. Vertical suplex onto arm. 9. Legdrop onto arm 10. Hyperextending arm with knees Sasha 1. Shoulder yank into apron facebuster 2. Twisting trample to arm 3. Pulling arm back on the ropes 4. Arm first neckbreaker 5. Straightjacket choke with Becky's own arm 6. Arms first backstabber 7. Repeatedly slamming elbows into mat via straightjacket hold 8. Double knees to arm 9. Bending arm backwards with foot to mat 10. Cross armbreaker 11. Crucifix armbreaker 12. Biting the arm 13. Springboard armdrag 14. Armbreaker from top rope 15. Bank statement with arm wrapped outside

I wonder how much Daniel Bryan has added to his case after his comeback. Everyone seemed to think his career was over in 2016 and he ranked #5 on his first run alone. Him, Jushin Liger and Rey Mysterio are the only guys in the Top 30 who've been active since last time, but I don't think Liger or Rey really did anything significant but have a few more good matches. Bryan's really filled a hole in his resume by having that big true heel run in 2018-19.

That doesn't necessarily make him 'less great' of a wrestler, but I do note that Brock has a huge advantage in that the very prescriptive and homogenised WWE style doesn't seem to apply to him. Like his match with Roman Reigns at WM31 was a classic and he has the last good Undertaker matches, but the fact that he blatantly bladed in them despite the 'no blood' rule has a lot to do with that. I'd still probably rank him over Manami Toyota though.

It's interesting that the 2006 list was far more female-heavy, and in the 2016 discussions there was a lot of talk of how Joshi had just gone out of fashion since then. Feels like the pendulum has swung back again now with WWE pushing women's wrestling seriously and there's been such a surge in interest. I can't see Meiko Satomura or Chigusa Nagayo ranking outside the Top 100 if we did this now, and it's not like they've really added to their case since.

Yes and I think weekly national TV is where the NWA model started to break. Eventually people got sick of Flair beating their favourites over and over again so went to watch Hulk Hogan win instead.

And an important context people miss out is the reason why the travelling World Champion was usually a heel is the local top star they'd wrestle was usually a babyface. But it was the latter who people would actually watch regularly.

Zack Sabre Jr is billed as 6'0 by New Japan, here he is with Adam Cole.

Asuka vs. Bayley banged hard in more ways than one. Shocked they actually got 25 minutes for a TV match.

The only wrestling-related dream I remember is I got into a fight and put the guy in a rear-naked choke (obvs dreaming I can't fight for shit) and heard a bell ring then suddenly realised I was in the octagon and the referee raised my hand and I was announced as the new UFC Heavyweight Champion. I went along with it. Then I got told I had to go to a press conference for my next fight, and Brock Lesnar was sitting there saying I'd be fighting him next. I panicked and told my real life friend Sean I'm gonna get killed. Then the day of the fight I heard that Brock had been found dead at Sean's house. I asked Sean what happened, he said he'd invited Brock round for drinks and poisoned it, but he was only trying to make Brock ill so he'd lose the fight but he must have miscalculated and put too much in so it killed him. I promised Sean I wouldn't tell anyone what he did, I know he was just trying to help. It was then announced that the United Nations would be leading an investigation into Brock's death. I woke up around this point so don't know what happened next.

Looks like a miscommunication. Sasha is flipping backwards like she's trying 'block' the suplex by rotating 360 degrees and landing on her feet, but Io has her arms locked around her like it's a proper German suplex when she should release her hands if she knew what Sasha was intending that, so Sasha gets tangled up.

This was fantastic. I think the limbwork makes sense throughout. Aja is going for Shida's knee to take away her knee strikes, and Shida retaliates by going after the arm. They only go away from this because Aja is getting her arm worked over on the outside and counters it into a brutal brainbuster on the ramp. She did that more because that's the only counter she had available. At this point, Shida's knocked silly from the blow to the head, so it makes sense for Aja to focus on that now, so she follows up with another brainbuster and a suplex to the back of the head as Shida's looking barely conscious. Aja then makes her mistake of the match as she goes for an elbow drop from the top rope right onto Shida's face! But Shida rolls out of the way just in time, and on recovering throws a knee strike at Aja's head. This is the first time she's been able to utilise her knees once Aja started gunning for it, as Aja had switched to focusing on her head for a while so her knee had some time to recover. And this flows into the finishing stretch. ****1/2

Sammy's put out a video addressing his comments:

I don't think that logic works in this era where drawing a live crowd isn't the main goal like it used to be. There's also the much larger audience watching on TV/Network to consider, and what do you do when your data shows what's over with them isn't necessarily reflected by fans who buy tickets for big shows? I think this has been a big issue for WWE for a while now, the fans who buy tickets to TV tapings/PPVs are increasingly a small subset of the overall fandom. You could see that when John Cena was getting overwhelmingly booed on every big show, while at the same time pulling all the biggest TV ratings, selling the most merchandise and never got booed at house shows. You have to choose which set of fans to cater to.

I'm very sceptical of the notion that a Brooklyn PPV crowd is representative of the general WWE audience however.

It was a work wasn't it.

This is gonna sound a bit tinhat, but I suspect Drake Maverick being released is a work. He's really playing up how heartbroken he is at losing his dream job and him still being included in the tournament seems like it's set up for a storyline of him doing so well WWE can't go through with firing him.

Watching the build to Wrestlemania 17 and was surprised at how good this was. The Big Show just returned at the Royal Rumble the night previously where he chokeslamed Rock through a table. It's suggested by commentary that this may have cost Rock the Rumble match as he still made it to the final 3 despite being hurt. So these two are to clash again meanwhile Benoit and Jericho are back from their ladder match. Jericho is hurt from the ladder match and soon has to be taken backstage for medical help after being brutalised by Show. This forces Rock to fight in a handicap situation. There's a wonderful part where Rock gradually takes down an increasingly dazed Big Show with running punches, but the best parts of the match are the Rock vs. Benoit exchanges. Eventually Jericho heroically returns to save Rock who looks like the odds were about to overwhelm him, and we get a load of big moves for an exciting finishing stretch. Really good match. ***1/2

Byron Saxton needs to come out of retirement to lay the smackdown on Orton.

I had intended to follow this up a bit earlier had real life not got in the way of watching wrestling, but I am back and up to the end of 2007! The Great Khali vs. John Cena - Judgement Day 05/20/07 The Great Khali marches to the ring holding the WWE Championship aloft, despite not being champion. I suppose he stole it. Or maybe he really thinks he's the champ. Cena opens by staring down Khali looking fearless and unleashing some pretty ineffective looking punches at Khali's chest before he gets clobbered with a big lariat. I don't have much of a problem with Cena's weak punches. It's not like he's ever billed as a great striker, and Khali was barely selling them anyway. There's a lot of good transitions in this match, very smartly laid out. Khali hits Cena with a bodyslam and then a decent looking legdrop for a two count. Cena gets out of the way at the second legdrop and counters with a blockbuster. Crowd is really behind him, but unfortunately his comeback is cut off by a Great Bicycle Kick. JR says he's "shocked at the flexibility and athleticism of the Great KhalI" alright don't overdo it Jim. We then get a long headlock which probably goes on a little too long until it turns into a test of strength and Cena breaks out, hits Khali with multiple shoulder tackles and knocks him into getting tangled in the ropes. The crowd genuinely leaps to their feet cheering this. The finishing stretch is also good as Khali goes to pick up the stairs but takes too long coz he's slow and Cena dropkicks them into his head, then hits him with the flying legdrop and taps him out with the STFU. Good match. ***1/4 The Great Khali vs. John Cena - Saturday Night's Main Event 06/02/07 Commentary says Cena will be defending the title against Khali in 24 hours on PPV, so a bit bizarre to me they're doing this match now...? Khali is on offence for the first few minutes of the match and it's incredibly boring. So slow. No neat transitions like the last match. This would be a lot more watchable if Khali would actually DO SOMETHING while Cena is selling whatever move he was just hit with, but instead Khali just blankly stands there waitin for Cena to get back up. Khali slams Cena, pins him with a foot on his chest and wins completely clean! That was a squash, didn't protect their champ at all. This was also very bad, can't help but feel a bit disappointed after seeing their previous match. 1/2* The Great Khali vs. John Cena - One Night Stand 06/03/07 This is a Last Man Standing Man. Starts off worrying similar to the previous match with Khali just dominating with incredibly slow offence, but Cena dodges a legdrop and hits a blockbuster off the ropes. Ok things are a bit more competitive now. Cena goes to the top rope but Khali is up and chops him off the turnbuckle straight to the floor. Quite a fall. Khali seems to be moving a bit faster than usual. This leads to a brawl through the crowd, and now things are getting quite fun. Cena keeps going for the FU putting all his might into it, but just can't do it. This match is like an internal battle of willpower for him. Khali charges at Cena but misses, Cena then grabs the camera crane thing and launches it at him and knocks Khali down. Khali takes a back bump! To the floor! Khali has actually been showing some personality here, antagonising the crowd rather than his previous blank standing around. They then fight up the side of a tractor or something!? Remember when WWE PPVs had unique sets. All leading to Cena finally mustering the strength to hit Khali with the FU, this time off the tractor to the floor. Khali either takes a big bump here, or this was gimmicked and I can't see how. Cena pins him the for 3 count. This might have been a carryjob, but was still really good. ***1/2 The Great Khali vs. John Cena vs. Umaga - Raw 06/04/07 3 straight days of Great Khali vs. John Cena matches. Bold. Now Umaga has been added. We start with the two monsters double-teaming Cena. How can he possibly overcome these odds!? Doesn't last long as Umaga soon throws the ring steps at Cena's head, only for Cena to duck so Khali gets clobbering with them instead. Cena and Umaga fight it out in the ring for a good few minutes, which is unsurprisingly the best part of the match. Cena is smashed to the outside but just as Umaga goes after him Khali is back, and he's pissed with Umaga! They have a staredown before unloading on each other. The monsters fighting is actually quite fun as they don't need to bump much, just hoss-stiffing each other. Khali seems to win these exchanges but soon Cena is back, hits him with the FU and gets another pinfall on him. Good triple threat. *** The Great Khali vs. Batista vs. Kane - Great American Bash 07/22/07 This is for the World Heavyweight Championship. Khali won the title from Batista apparently. Boy does Batista take one hell of a bump for Khali's chokeslam. Proper leaps into the air for it. I was debating whether to bother with this match, don't usually associate any of these three with good matches nevermind together, but it was 10 minutes so I wanna see what Khali does. Khali takes a decent bump getting double slammed into the announce table to take him out for a bit while Kane and Batista have a hossfight. I will give Khali a bit of a credit for very just on time to break up Batista's pin on Kane to return to the mix. Better than I expected and Khali was fine here. ** The Great Khali vs. Batista - No Mercy 10/07/07 This is the infamous Punjabi Prison Match. Never actually seen this. Yes, it is incredibly annoying trying to watch a wrestling match where they'd in this double layed bamboo structure so you can't see what's going on properly. This is a bad gimmick match to associate with Khali since the rules depend on climbing out of the structure quickly to escape, but Khali can't do anything quickly to safe his life. Most of this is pretty boring, Khali's back to doing those God damn nerveholds. Batista's working hard here to make this watchable, I've came out of this liking him a bit more. He takes a huge 10 foot bump off the bamboo as Khali knocks him down, then takes forever to climb across it and go for the other structure. Enough time for Batista to get up and LEAP FROM ONE BAMBOO STRUCTURE TO THE NEXT ABOUT 15 FEET HIGH IN THE AIR. The could have went so badly wrong! Batista wins due to Khali being slow af. *1/2 The Great Khali vs. Fit Finlay - Raw 12/16/07 Of course Finlay shows zero fear and goes straight at Khali just walloping him with chops. He does well to throw the monster off his game for a while and gets him battling on the outside. Good start to the match. Khali chops Finlay across the chest from the floor while Finlay's on the apron. Don't think I've ever seen that done before. Then the match goes downhill when Khali brings out that damn nervehold again. Surely some producer has noticed by now that it's boring as hell and just kills matches, even here when Finlay's selling it better than anyone I've seen so far. Finaly very gradually gets to the ropes. Match starts to pick up a bit more until Hornswoggle runs a distraction for Finlay to whack Khali with the shillelagh for the pin. This was alright for a 5 minute TV match. *3/4