Kadaveri

Discussion of betting odds:

There's a real feeling of contempt and anger in this match that is so badly lacking in modern WWE. Just little things like their facial expressions and their yells when they hit each other make it all feel like a vicious fight. I liked a Twitter take saying replace the kendo stick with a beer cooler and this feels like a lucha brawl. It's a shame the TV has such bad writing for the promo segments coz there's actually a coherent story being told in these matches of Charlotte fighting to force Sasha to respect her as a deserving champion, like actually pleading "Respect me... I'm the champ" to her. The only time this story element is ever touched on outside the matches is Charlotte's interview on the loosely scripted Raw Talk where she says she always wanted to be as good as Sasha. But back to the match. You can tell both are working their alignments really well when a Charlotte NC crowd is cheering on Sasha so much. Charlotte has some pretty entertaining trolling of the crowd mocking their "COME ON SASHA!" shouts while she's ragdolling Sasha around the stage. There's this great strike exchange on the apron where they're mixing it up and taking irregular recovery times from each hit rather than just repeat bashing each other like the played out Frye-Takayama spot. Sasha takes a big boot and takes a cool bump off the apron to the stairs. Charlotte comes down but doesn't realise Sasha is getting up, and from under the ring she's pulled out a kendo stick! Just watch Charlotte get kendo'ed to hell it's so cathartic. Note Charlotte's classic Flair begging off and the look on Sasha's face telling you she's unloading years of bottled up anger at Charlotte. One of the most rewarding babyface asskicking fire spots in WWE in years. Really creative finish. Did not see that coming when I first watched the match even like 2 seconds beforehand, and from the look of the guy standing next to them he didn't either. Charlotte taps almost immediately. Thank God she didn't learn from Shawn Michaels. Best of their series. ****1/2

Just rewatched this for the GME for consideration but I've given it a ****. I think a big weakness is that a big story element in the hype video is that Benoit and Angle despise each other, yet this has no impact on the match.

According to Top Scoopster Brad Shepard: Bam Bam Bigelow, Ivory, the Dudley Boyz and Kid Rock.

The best heel vs. heel match I've ever seen in WWE and surely in the Top 5 for WWE tag matches? Right from the start this is a heated war between two fierce factions over who runs the yard and the crowd is hot as hell for it. Each person in that match manages to have their own identity within it, pretty impressive achievement for a 6-man. Dean Ambrose is the emotional hothead flying in throwing rapid strikes at people's faces but his feistiness gets the better of him like when he runs straight into a big boot from Harper or when he charges over the barricade into a crowd brawl with Wyatt from which he never returns. Seth Rollins is the match's high-flying and Roman Reigns is the big warrior who fights until the end where the odds just get insurmountable. Bray Wyatt is the guy least involved in the physicality but appears to be directly Harper and Rowan in his role as the cult leader. So for instance after Harper + Rowan put Rollins through a table he's standing by them looking brooding. Luke Harper is his lieutenant who occassionally needs to get Rowan out of control who gets whipped up his in his zealous defence of Wyatt. The finishing stretch is such a lovely subvertion on The Shield trope we'd got used to by this point. The Wyatts have successfully taken out Rollins and Ambrose so Reigns is left on his own to fight them off. He actually gets the crowd believing that he's gonna pull it off as well, managing to brute force escape a Sister Abigail attempt and hitting a spear on Harper. Unfortunately for him it's just not enough, and eventually he gets taken out by Wyatt and pinned clean for the first time in WWE. ****3/4

A Shield trios match hidden away on a C-Show I hadn't seen until today. This is pretty fun if unremarkable stuff. Roman Reigns is super over getting chanted for by name which no one else gets. It's such a shame when you know WWE would botch his main event push in a year's time. Exciting finish where Roman runs into the ring to hit a double spear before combining with Ambrose to hit a Superman Punch Hart Attack (bring this move back!!) on Diego. ***

Sasha's been involved in 3 injuries in her 5 1/2 years in WWE. There's no real basis for her getting a reputation other than women's wrestling fandom tend to start a witch hunt after every injury. Like Nia Jax got a ridiculous amount of social media hate when Bayley got injured last summer which you rarely see when a man gets injured. When and who else got injured? Alexa Bliss got a broken nose in a 2014 NXT match and was out for three weeks. Emma hurt her back in a house show match May last year and was out for a month (she'd been out for a year from back surgery not long prior so presume this got aggravated again).

Strong contender for 2016 MOTY for me. The really great thing about this one is it's the most violent WWE hardcore match in years yet it's takes until the last 2 minutes for anyone to actually use a weapon on someone! Yeah AJ brings the chair out early on but Roman takes him out before he can swing it. Then later Roman swings a hard chairshot but AJ dodges it. You can really effectively build a sense of danger and intensity without even hitting anyone, so when AJ finally unleashes those chairshots on Roman it really means something. The match is filled with some awesome spots which have impeccable timing. For example Roman Superman Punches AJ while AJ is standing on the ropes about to hit a Phenomenal Forearm and sends him tumbling to the floor. AJ blocks a Superman Punch by hitting Roman with a midair shoulder tackle that sends him flying. You need great chemistry to pull these things off and have them looking so great. AJ's bumping in this match is something else. He is working so hard to get this match and Roman over it's no surprise that Vince has pushed him so strong ever since giving him those wins over Cena. There's the spot where Roman backbody drops him onto the announce table where AJ does a full 360 midair spin before crashing down it. The crowd sounded astonished. But before long he's up again with Roman powerbombing him into the other table and a bit earlier he's swinging him into the apron and barricade like Samoe Joe did to CM Punk in one of their old ROH matches. Did I mention that this match is VIOLENT? There's this anti-Roman element of the crowd who get a bit embarrassing. They start the match by chanting "You can't wrestle!" at him, and when he then puts on an elite performance they just chant "You still suck!" everytime he does something great. That chant clearly means "We know deep down you don't suck, but we refuse to admit it". This chant follows one of the best moments in that match where Roman hits AJ with SPLASH MOUNTAIN as in Dynamite Kansai's finisher (I love the thought of these guys watching 90s AJW) and hits it better than she ever did. When she did it it was more of a slam but Roman actually chucks AJ several inches up in the air before smashing him down in a powerbomb-pin which is executed perfectly by both guys for a 2.9 kickout. Roman's selling is perfect in this match. He gets his knee hurt about halfway through on that Superman Punch>Shoulder Tackle spot and spends the rest of the time working at like 70% speed and putting more weight on the other leg. How he hits that spear on the outside jumping on the alternate leg is great attention to detail. And note how he doesn't do this over the top selling like a lot of WWE guys do acting like they've actually broken their leg hopping around the place which you can never maintain till the end. It's just something that's hindering his kayfabe performance. Amazing match from two amazing wrestlers. ****3/4

Well this match was incredibly stupid and boring. Didn't know whether it was supposed to a brutal hardcore match or some bad slapstick comedy. The totally dead crowd who only got awakened to chant "We Want Rollins!" sums this debacle up. Minus a star or two.

Yeah you can come up with the odd case with men, but with the women I swear every single time there's an injury the social media of the person "responsible" gets bombarded with hate messages calling them dangerous/should be fired etc. It's completely out of proportion. Like when Tyson Kidd almost died in a match with Samoa Joe I remember calm unanimity that it was a freak accident of someone with neck issues/not Joe's fault. Yet something similar but less serious happens in a women's match and that rationality is thrown out the window.

Sasha's been involved in 3 injuries in her 5 1/2 years in WWE. There's no real basis for her getting a reputation other than women's wrestling fandom tend to start a witch hunt after every injury. Like Nia Jax got a ridiculous amount of social media hate when Bayley got injured last summer which you rarely see when a man gets injured.

Being able to do a cartwheel hardly means you can safely work a WWE schedule.

I'm perplexed that WWE cleared her when according to Paige her doctors said she should never wrestle again. It's the total opposite to the Daniel Bryan situation where his doctors have cleared him but WWE still says no.

I re-watched this as part of the Greatest Match Ever project and have to say it's not as good as I remember it being when I watched it live. Not gonna nominate it. There's still a lot of great stuff, the character conflict at the beginning is really strong but it turn into a bit of a spotfest in the middle of the match. An entertaining spotfest but you there's not much emotional resonance in it. Really hot finishing sequence with just enough nearfalls so it doesn't go on too long. ****1/4

I remember the reports being "It's the 'Yes' chant that's over, not Daniel Bryan." Oh and in other news Meltzer's given Omega vs. Jericho a 5.

They 'succumbed' to the fans in 2014 because Daniel Bryan was doing monster ratings in the quarters for months up to Mania. He wasn't just arena-over.

The issue with Asuka winning the Rumble is they're surely not having the Wrestlemania match be Asuka vs. Alexa when they just did that match last week on Raw and it got crickets. Is Alexa losing the title before Mania?

Terri Runnels is on Wreddit endorsing Dana Brooke's take on the Alexandria York gimmick.

The sequel to the Brooklyn match and not quite as good in my opinion (I know some people strongly disagree!) due to a bit of sloppiness early on, but once that's over and done with this turns into yet another barnburner. The heel heat segment is one of the best I've seen in WWE in years... Heels just don't do this kind of thing anymore, it seems like the WWE style is for heels to just be boring with chinlocks and stuff because it theoretically gets meta heat. Sasha doesn't do any of that. She puts Bayley in a Boston Crab and stamps on the back her head! Why does anyone else do that? And then she terrorises a young girl in the crowd in a Bayley shirt, snatches her hairband and gets in the ring to do a piss-taking impression of a crying child. All meanwhile a crowd who cheered her entrance are appalled and booing her as loud as they can. Special stuff. An underrated aspect of this match is the numerous callbacks to the Brooklyn match. Sasha Banks don't fall for the same shit twice. So in Brooklyn there's a spot where Sasha is trash talking Bayley in the corner only to get kicked in the face. Here she trash talks her in the corner again, Bayley attempts to kick her but Sasha catches her boot and turns it into a backbreaker with a sinister smile on top. At Brooklyn Bayley pulls Sasha straight of the ropes into a Bayley to Belly, at Respect she tries the same thing but Sasha blasts her in the face with a forearm this time. Bayley goes for the reverse hurricanrana like in Brooklyn, but here Sasha flips through it landing on her feet (I don't care that she slips). At Brooklyn Bayley successfully reverses the Bank Statement into one of her own, she tries it again here but Sasha sees it coming and forces her right back into it. The finish is fantastic. Bayley counters another Bank Statement attempt by putting Sasha into the most brutal looking submission hold ever seen in NXT... I don't even know what it is, some kind of inverted cattle mutilation + bending fingers back + kicking in the head. Something poetic about the nicest person on the show doing that after all these years of Sasha's terrible behaviour. It's like the story was Bayley always had the technical wrestling ability to really hurt Sasha if she wanted to, but she didn't do it until convinced that was the only way to win the feud. Sasha screams in pain/fear like we've never heard her before in this 'Boss' persona and taps out.

Fantastic match. Even if it doesn't feel the most hate-filled in the wider context of pro-wrestling I think it worked here because New Japan rarely has these kinds of matches, so they didn't need to up the ante too much to still get that vicious brawl feel in the context of this show. Like when's the last time we had blood in a big New Japan match? I've been critical of Omega's selling a lot sometimes he gets way too goofy but he was great here, one slight nitpick is when Jericho Irish Whipped him into the ropes after getting busted open he runs way too fast for someone selling getting brutalised but other than that he was pretty much perfect. The table spots were both unexpected and enhanced the match, the first one especially made everything feel so chaotic out there and Jericho was very entertaining with his outrageous asshole antics attacking the ringside staff. I don't think there was any inconsistency with the rope breaks at all. It's a no DQ match so you can't get disqualified for keeping someone in a submission when they're in the ropes. But it's not a Falls Count Anywhere match so you can't win when someone's in the ropes as that's out of bounds, so getting a hand to the ropes breaks a pinfall as normal. The match did go on a bit too long though. The first half is awesome throughout but the second half is where a bit of trimming would have helped and it did drift back into the formulaic New Japan style towards the end. ****1/2

Loved Roman vs. Joe. I really don't get this common refrain that Roman 'has no character' when he clearly does. He's very loyal and protective of his friends and will beat the shit out of anyone who comes after them. What's not to get? Great performance from both wrestlers last night, I totally bought that nearfall. Gonna go against the grain on Alexa vs. Asuka. I did like at first how Alexa was showing cowardice and Asuka's quite charismatic with her trolling, but Alexa's selling of Asuka's strikes was atrocious. It's like she's terrified of being hit.

A face Money in the Bank winner can declare when his title shot will be in advance. Like when John Cena won it and said he'll wrestle for the title on the 1,000th episode of Raw. I think now would be an opportune time to build to Rusev + English beating The Usos for the tag titles at Mania, and if Rusev's still over after then move him to the title picture by Summerslam.

Dave's still really vague on why Velveteen Dream has disappeared off the face of the earth since the Aleister Black match. Apparently he "hasn't been seen" and "hasn't been at the Performance Center" since then.

This match is so awesome. The spot that gets me fired up more than anything else is when Cena is all bloodied up taking shots from Umaga, and then punches himself in the head a few times egging Umaga on. Wow. Umaga deserves credit for the psychology of his offence in this match. All throughout the match he's targetting Cena's injured ribs UNTIL Cena gets busted open on the steps, then Umaga switches to punching the hell out of that cut to knock Cena out. Excellent stuff from a smart monster. ****3/4

I'm intrigued. Do you have a link?