Tetsujin

Build MJF/Kingston as soon as posible. They're the ones as over as neecessary + they have some previous story with Punk, so when he comes back it'll be a hot storyline for him. That said, I HATE the interim stuff. Either you're the world champion or not, there should't be any grey area for that. If Punk's gonna return sooner than later, I would have the title vacant until his return; it doesn't make sense to crown a fake champion to just make the job to Punk at one of their first title defenses.

I don't care about realism in that way, if the worker is selling a limb and that's adding to the match/a long term story, that's all I need.

Them being good is just another thing, though.

NJPW has been slowly and subtly on decline since 2018. I still strongly believe Naito not winning at WK 12 was the beginning of the end: Gedo prefered to give the historic Okada reign to Omega, in all his "outsiderist" glory, instead of pulling the trigger on the biggest phenomenom they had in a long time. Priorizing both the american market and Okada as the ace to beat, have cursed the product.

The Owen tournament has been a huge disssapointment (specially the male one, but there are awful things common to both genres). Hell I enjoyed the "tournament qualifyers" more (even if I dislike that concept a lot, just put them all on the freaking thing!). Too short, questionable names and victories, unexciting (Johnny)/wasted (Itoh) jokers, and an overall feel of "this shit isn't important enough and they are doing it just for good wrestling marketing or whatever". Why aren't any champions competing in it? What are the personal connections most of these guys have with Owen to want to win it? It could have been handled much, much better and make it unique. Right now, it reminds me of one of those rushed KOTR WWE made sometimes when they couldn't give a shit about that stuff. If the Owen tournament becomes an annual tradition, for the love of god give it a better presentation and more attractive names. I'm not liking the whole PPV build up, tbh. Page/Punk is going surprisingly slow; BCC were lost for weeks and now will work with the weakest stable of the whole company, just as anchors for a feud that should already be finished (Jericho/Kingston); the TNT scene has become garbage; the tag scene feels like in hiatus until JE lose the titles... There are programs I'm kinda enjoying like MJF/Wardlow or the stupid Hookhausen stuff, and it's not like the matches don't have potential to be good: all of them have, my criticism is with the road to them, because I don't feel nearly as much excitement as I was feeling for the previous PPV.

This one is wild. Both are two of the best ever at just being themselves at any moment. They could simply be on the apron watching tag partners wrestle, and they'll be interesting just for their mannerisms alone, for example. Both feel larger than life. Park's consistency is one of the biggest in any wrestler, while Savage didn't have that. He also beats him at output of great matches (something Savage strongly lacks, for me).

Been rewatching a ton of Orton recently. Man I did dirty on this guy. He really shines through most of his career, with exquisite selling and iconic offense, and he's a master of little details. He also hace a lot of underrated/hidden gems: the Benoit match, the WM Punk match, the WHC Henry match, some of the Cena matches (I specially like Breaking Point 2009 and HIAC 2014), a random RVD match in fucking 2013 at SmackDown, the great Cesaro match in early 2014, the very first Reigns great singles match, and even carried motherfucking KANE to some of his best stuff ever in 2012 (one of Orton's weakest years). I even rewatched some of his considered worst stuff (the HHH Mania main, for example) and most of it wasn't even that bad, it was actually kinda decent, at least for his part. I don't see Gordy having a chance at basically anything. I don't even like the 88 RWTL finals as much, I'd put some Orton matches above it with no doubt.

I think Rey wins this one pretty easily just by consistency alone. Even if he doesn't have as many elite stuff as you would want for a project like GWE (and Steamboat might have him beat in that regard for a lot of people), he's just been too good for too long, and has as many good to great matches as anyone else ever. Steamboat doesn't have that, even though he was pretty good for a decent amount of time as well, he wasn't as consistent through the 80s. If I find myself in a random Rey match, probs are I'm gonna like it more than a random Steamboat match. And Steamboat's greatest hits, for me, are even fewer than Rey's... Althought I would rank his Ironman with Rude and WrestleWar 89 higher than any Rey match ever, but those are just two matches. At this point in my list, Rey is still a top 25 contender, while Steamboat struggles to remain at the top half.

How is a ten year old peak considered "short"? I think Hash and Ogawa did show some chemistry, but only on the few moments of their big matches that weren't heavily marked by booking. If they let them had usual wrestling matches, I'm sure they would have been at least great. And yeah Nagata > Hash isn't anything crazy at all. I'm not sure I'd rank them that way on GWE, but I don't have any problem with it, think it's pretty fair. I can buy the argument of Nagata having a clearly higher floor than Hash.

Jeff Hardy going over Darby is stupid. Also, I guess It makes sense for Eddie and PnP to join the BBC, but I expected the stable to be more like "Mox and Bryan recruiting young guys to make them violent enough" as promised since the beginning. If these three guys officially join, now they would be too many and no room for more Yuta-like wrestlers on it.

Some would say it's too early for making a GWE case for her, but she's already 33, and has been active for six years. Right now I wouldn't rank her, but if she adds four excellent years to what she already has... By 2026 she could be a lock for a lot of people. She has all the tools, as explained above, and she's one of those young wrestlers who just seems to "get it", and is so satisfying to watch. She's a natural.

Two of the greatest White heel performances must be the G1 2020 Ishii match, and last year's Tanahashi NEVER title match (which is the only pandemic era match I'm considering all time great, and the only japanese one that made me forget the crowd couldn't do shit 100% of the time). But yeah, any match since his 2019 G1 run serves you to see how much of a prodigy he has become. Already one of the best wrestlers in the world, and probably the best heel in pro wrestling in at least the last five years.

They could start their rivalry as soon as possible, have UE dominate for a while, and then Omega returns by surprise, cleaning the room and equalizing things before the ultimate showdown. They don't need to wait for Kenny to start the whole war. BCC still rocks obviously, but now that Yuta is formally in it, they need to move to another storyline. It's time for Bryan and Mox to go for the tag titles.

I think it was clearly a botch. Mox even smiles at the end after hitting the ref like wtf dude.

Don't get the Sammy heat. He was becoming a natural heel during his babyface title reign, so they made the right move and turned him heel to regain the championship and start what should be a very enjoyable heel title reign. And he's a very good young wrestler so, again, why the hate?

If WWE failed to exploit a market in India, what the hell do AEW think they can do? The product is better, for sure, but that alone doesn't mean much (sadly). WWE is a globalized monopoly and still India didnt gave a fuck about wrestling.

Punk/Penta bothers me. It sounds too good to be thrown randomly at this Dynamite, in a moment where I don't think is a good idea to make neither one of them lose. That match up deserved some build up and higher stakes.

They should make an angle about the TNT Championship corrupting his holders like it's the wrestling's version of the ring of Sauron or something.

His best tv matches are the ones worked like a big ppv match but in RAW (vs HBK, Punk, Rey, his best US title challenge matches...), so I'm not sure those count. I'd say he's a mediocre tv worker because he always did the exact same match with any random opponent and just filled time for the finishing sequence and/or overbooked finish of the week. Cena's case is all about big matches.

This was stupid. Not in a offensive way like the 2018 matches were, but in a dull, boring way: they just went full easy mode. The character work was very inconsistent as well: sometimes Reigns needed to cheat, but then he casually pinned Brock clean (I know some people say it was done that way due to a legit injury, but sadly it still hurts the match anyway). Combined with the awful build up and the fact they've been sacrificing the whole roster throughout eight fucking years, you have one of the worst WM big matches of all time, even if, as a match, I could go 2* or something like that and there's definitely worse matches out there. But damn. This is depressing. One of the worst sagas ever made in wrestling, only saved by one all timer at the verh beginning that now seems like an almost unbelievable miracle.

I 100% agree. Other than that, absolutely phenomenal match, holy fucking shit.

This was great, as it should've. It's been a loooong time since I watched any Briscoes match, so looking at them, looking in their 50s, while wrestling like they were in their 20s was super satisfying. And for FTR, they had been always good, but since the NXT days I haven't seen them as good as they were here. I missed more multiman action towards the climax, for example, having a tag partner break a count instead of forcing a clean finisher kickout by a single guy, but the last sequence of the match really captured what tag team wrestling can be at its best: an unpredictable storm where only teamwork can decide who stays on top. I also would have loved if they worked a FTR face turn in a more clear way. Having them being assholes to the Briscoes the whole match but wanting to hug them and give them respect at the end felt a bit outta nowhere to me. I get that sometimes all you need to change your mind is a fucking fight for your money, but I would have loved more character work in that direction. Still: fantastic action, real dream match atmosphere (I know that term is devaluated af today, but this time is legit) and strong character moments. The strikes here looked amazing, and there were a variety of them, not just generic forearms or chops. All this while working at a formidable pace and doing strong character work. Yeah, pretty good pro wrestling here.

Man what a run FTR is having. I wonder if TK would dare to put the titles on reDragon so they can drop them to FTR as soon as possible. The tag titles need some interesting and consistent storylines, instead of random big matches with some title changes here and there. Babyface FTR could make that work, I'm sure.

Edge/AJ was good. Pretty good, even. It was worked slowly but everything had a purpose and meaning. Not the best match I've seen this WM (Becky/Bianca), but still pretty good. Annoying finish outta nowhere, but it is what it is with this company. The main event was boring. Same old shit with these two, but now Roman fucking Reigns is a chicken shit heel for most of the match. How interesting. Obviously, for the finish, he becomes some sort of allmighty god that can beat Brock clean. He's so terribly inconsistent in his character by this point. This has to be one of the worst big sagas of matches of all time, up there with Cole/Gargano, and it's even more frustrating because we 100% know how great they can be together. But sadly WM 31 wasn't the rule.

Becky/Bianca was really good. Charlotte/Ronda was a bit of a mess with an awful finish, but still watchable if you want to give it a try. Oh and it's super charming to look at how excited Byron Saxton was to receive a Stone Cold Stunner.