Tetsujin

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.

I've always thought the same. Nick is far better than Matt in every aspect and it's a shame they're basically inseperable at this point, because they'll do Young Bucks stuff until their 70s or something, but I've always wanted to see a Nick's singles run.

Claudio should 100% be in the Blackpool Combay Club. In fact, he should debut right against Hangman and semi-squash him for the title. Man, having Claudio being the dominant, stoic world champ of the stable, with Regal, Mox and Bryan doing the promos, while also having Bryan and Mox dominate the tag division and young guys like Yuta or Dante to play the students role, man that sounds waaaay too good to me. Bring Mercedes, Cargill and/or Serena too and it's as perfect as you could ask for.

There was a singles match with Jungle Boy last year on Dynamite that I really liked. That was one of those matches that I saw as "ok I don't like neither of these guys but I can appreciate they're good enough".

His rivalry with Dean Ambrose for the IC title in the first half of 2017 is pretty good. I would specially recommend the january SmackDown match, and, ironically, the "title changes hands via DQ" at Extreme Rules. I still don't get how they made that gimmick work but they absolutely did; both are great matches. The GBOF one was lame, though, but overall they had surprisingly good chemistry.

But how's that a bad thing? I repeat: Michaels was the one staying. Flair put him over. Also, in retrospective, I'm glad we have the "I'm sorry I love you" line, because that way we still have some drama surrounding Flair's retirement, even after Flair himself devaluated it later at TNA, or working that Hogan tour, or whatever. Maybe the reason some people don't think about that match as THE Flair retirement match is because Flair himself wasted it. But we still have Shawn's inner conflict to add emotion to it to make up for it.

I don't get this critic. I mean Shawn was the one staying, and Flair got his ceremony the night right after, so it's not like he didn't had the attention he deserved. Also, Flair dying with the sword in his hand, telling Shawn to bring it on (for a *third* Sweet Chin Music), was a very powerful image as well. The angle was about how tragic it was for Michaels to be the one that had to retire his old friend, and Flair not wanting any mercy at all. They perfectly delivered with that finish.

Wasn't his gimmick to literally hang people? I remember an interview of him telling how he stopped doing it because he felt uncomfortable.

The Young Bucks vs Santana & Ortiz PPV match is quite amazing and probably still the best Bucks match in the company to me. I believe It was at the first Full Gear.

I was just thinking about it. He's definitely adding to his case, but the question is if he can do it enough in these four years remaining. I think his overall career is kinda underrated from a ringwork perspective, and he's someone I might vote for (although not higher than top 75 or something like that). Him bursting his fucking ass off at 62, specially when he was considered retired and broken for so long, definitely helps.

1985: Nick Bockwinkel, Rick Martel, Tatsumi Fujinami 1995: Kenta Kobashi, Bret Hart, Aja Kong 2005: Samoa Joe, Eddie Guerrero, Meiko Satomura 2015: AJ Styles, Tetsuya Naito, Sami Zayn 2025: Bianca Belair, MJF, Shota Umino.

10000% agre, I've always have felt that way. If I had a wrestling company, I would divide my roster in three main divisions: main stars, rookies and tags, and I would just have my main title, tag/tríos titles and a developmental title. I'd probably stablish a rule of "if you win ten succesful defenses with the rookie title, you have become worthy of the main leagues" or something like that.

I enjoyed the PPV overall, if only because the two main matches I was hyped for delivered + two and a half pleasant surprises. But gotta say, the order of the matches doesn't feel right to me, and there clearly was a problem with the crowd losing interest throughout the whole thing, so I wonder if changing the order could have helped things. Kingston/Jericho was the MOTN, something I never expected. I fucking love Eddie Kingston man, he just works in any context against any type of opponent. He's so natural and relatable. Huge win for him, he should win the main title as soon as possible (but not from Hangman I guess). Didn't care for the tag titles, but saw the ending and some highlights on Twitter, and they looked great. The ladder match was the big dissapointment of the match for me. Yeah It had some really cool, creative and character-driven moments, specially by Orange who was the clear mvp of the match, but I don't think the whole thing was done as greatly as they could have done it. For example, Christian, one of the most fucking experienced ladder match workers in history, did almost nothing. No real Starks-Hobbs dynamic either, neither as a team nor as enemies. Not enough Keith Lee showcase. Wardlow did look great though, and he was the guy who had to won so they made that right, and it's still a pretty fun multiman ladder match far ahead of the worst type of those matches, but kind of wasted potencial. Strickland's debut was fine, but I don't feel he has any room now. AEW needs to stop hiring relevant masculine wrestlers. Jade/Tay was solid. Fun carryjob by Cargill, who looks awesome, but Conti needs to get better if she wanna look convincent on tv. One of those women matches that clearly got less time because they are women and AEW has a problem with that, but considering Conti's level and Cargill's dominating persona, the lenght felt justified this time. Punk/MJF was a 3'75* star match with a 5* presentation and build up, so yeah pretty great. I didn't like that it was thrown in the middle of the show, between the two women matches, instead of like, semi main event or something. They used the dog collar gimmick good enough (even if most of the thumbtacks spots didn't looked as well), had great dramatic selling, and the Wardlow turn was done perfectly if you ask me. I wasn't too sold on MJF, but after this rivalry and match, I'm 100% sure he has to be a main event guy in the future. And Punk, my god. It's impossible to not feel him when he's motivated. The guy has the biggest passion for our little fake sport, it's wonderful he recovered it after so many years. Brit/Rosa was clearly the worst match of the night, and the only one I would consider it failed to some degree. Part of it is because of the finish, obviously: It looked like typical WWE overbooking bullshit where the heel wins at the end so nobody does; but also, the wrestling itself wasn't good enough. Both girls had her moments, specially Rosa who is pretty solid, but Brit really needs to improve if she wanna look like a real star, not only when cutting promos. She has some character moments but that's not enough. It's bullshit that AEW didn't pull the trigger here so we can have a Rosa win in her hometown next week or fucking whenever, that looks like the kind of bullshit Gedo is known for ("don't worry about Naito not getting his moment yet! In two years WrestleKingdom happens on a weekend!"). God fucking dammit gimme her win now and have her celebrate with her hometown crowd in a promo or something, now I've lost all the interest I had in her victory. PPVs should prevail over weekly shows, even if you only have four of them (hell, I would even say *specially if you only have four of them*). Mox/Bryan was really fucking good and a match that didn't deserve the crowd it had. It was worked wonderfully, because they treated each other with respect but they're both also two big kings of the jungle at their reapective ways, so of course the character clash was inevitable, and the violence scalated appropiately. The match also was good enough to give us something special between the two of them, but not as much as they could give us in a bigger scenario (after a long feud, or for the world title, for example), so they left gas in the tank for a future, more decisive encounter, and that guys is clever pro wrestling. I liked that Mox won, it sets up an eventual Bryan vendetta over him at the long term, but right now we need their tag team and what a fucking way to start it. Eddie/Jericho was the MOTN, but Regal's debut was easily the best moment of the show. So hyped for this. The Sting tríos match was insane. I can't do It justice with words. One of those rare matches that you have to WATCH if you wanna truly believe how crazy it is. And to think I almost skipped it... Didn't watch the main event, I wasn't interested sadly. Again, watched some highlights on YouTube and Twitter and it looked good enough, but the lenght, the build up, Cole not having any chance at winning... All of that made me care a lot less about the whole thing, so didn't bothered, sorry. Glad Hangman won, now he desperately needs a really good storyline to give his title reign a proper burst, because he started super well against Bryan but then It always has looked like his stuff wasn't even top three most important things to look for. That needs to change.

Punk is just putting a WON indie-hater in his place. No biggie.

The Punk/MJF rivalry is not only the greatest thing AEW has ever done up to this point, it's becoming one of the best wrestling rivalries I've ever seen, period. Right in front of our very eyes. I hope the Dog Collar match delivers because the build up has been exceptional, with all-time great segments (and I'm not just refering to the deep stuff, the Spears squash for example was very well done, six man tags involving Darby, Sting and FTR, the Wardlow-MJF dynamic...). Wonderful feud, really.

White in AEW should be the inmediate top heel and screw Hangman's title reign sooner than later, then destroying the Elite-Superkliq hybrid from the inside.

This is 100% true and something that annoys me a lot when watching current wrestling. I didn't mind it in this particular Darby/Sammy match because Guevara sold the bad knee well enough to get invested in his struggle to do his spots and capitalize on them, but yeah, totally agree with the overall take. Anyway, great fucking Dynamite again. I'm a guy who cherrypicks, but this time I was surprised because I wanted to watch almost the whole show. Almost every single match/segment was worth watching. Amazing promo by Punk, nuff said. Really good Bryan/Moriarty match + awesome Moxley promo, nuff said. No offense to Hangman because he's doing great, but this honestly feels like it should be the world title picture. Cool Wardlow performance. Guy's getting more and more over with time. Shades of early 2005 Batista. Don't think he's gonna get that far but hey, at least his rupture with MJF will be pretty cool to watch. Neat Baker and Mercedes segment, setting up the post-match angle after Rosa/Mercedes. I love things like that in weekly tv wrestling, everything feels much more cohesive. There also was a neat Keith Lee backstage minipromo that I liked. I liked the Hangman-Cole stuff. Really liked Cole bullying Schiavone, it's a cool character trait that helps him to get heat from the type of crowd that always cheers for him even if he's heel. I'm not really interested in their match together, because Cole has proven to be a horrible main event guy, but Hangman delivers match after match, so I trust him enough. The promo was good enough (had two really great promos to match earlier in this very show, though), and I... kinda like the Bucks-reDragon-Cole storyline???? I normally hate Elite melodrama, but when Omega's not in it is far more digestible (this will age bad because he'll come back to have the anticipated tríos match sooner than later, but whatever). Maybe I liked it here because they linked it to the qualifyers for the Tag Team Titles, I'm interested in that. Also, wtf with Dark Order's 10? Didn't watch the match because c'mon, but PnP going over against Jericho was definitely the right call. Really liked Eddie's return, and he should defeat Jericho clean 100%. Rosa/Mercedes was good for what it was, they gave them only 10 minutes but for a No DQ match that went straight to the point, it felt right. They destroyed each other, and the next champ won. Wrestling's simplicity works pretty well most of the times. I liked Mercedes not wanting to attack Rosa after the match, and DMD's squad ruining everything. Baker should drop the title at Revolution, her work is done. This is womens division done right and I'm so glad. Don't care for Malakai Black's stuff since Cody buried him. He should be out there killing everyone and giving Hangman a run for his money, or dominating the TNT scene, not being wannabe Bray Wyatt. Let's see if the tag team next week changes things. Guevara/Allin was pretty fucking cool, as always. These two should have the rivalry of their generation and main event sold out shows in their mid 30s. Really interested in seeing what Andrade can do with both of them, a Triple Threat match for Revolution sounds crazy and I would be totally on board for it.

Cody out of AEW is wonderful news. Cody back in WWE would be even better news (trash belongs in the trash bin). But the funniest part to me is how quickly and badly the "Cody is booking himself to be the new Cena and everything he's doing he's doing it on purpose, there's nothing wrong" narrative has aged. Now we only need Omega and The Bucks out, and the company would be limitless. But that's nearly impossible I guess.

Man this is super hard. I have both as top 10 contenders and I right now I would rank them pretty close to each other, but I'm not so sure about the order. Brain says Fuji, guts say Bret. Both are masters at the offense, and at their best they're among the best sellers of all time. Fuji's peak was among some of the best wrestlers ever, so he might have more overall very good and great matches, while Bret peaked surrounded by (much) lesser workers, so he had to carry them and he did it wonderfully. Bret might have the best one on one matches, but Fujinami has the best multiman matches. I would've loved for Bret to stay wrestling during the 00s and see how well he could had been as a aging veteran like Shawn ort Taker did, and Fujinami's veteran work at the 90s, for what I've seen, is pretty decent (and has a fucking amazing match with Hashimoto which might be his best singles match ever, and that means a lot to me). I think I also like pre-peak Fuji more than pre-peak Bret.

I love the approach for the Mox/Danielson storyline. Much better than expected. I don't think Punk/MJF was a classic or even "just" great, but definitely worth watching. It was too long, but their dozens of interactions were super fun to watch, and yeah the pacing is a bit over the place, when they did "regular wrestling" with no character work It didn't look as good, and the crowd wasn't engaged throughout the whole thing, but overall I'd say it was pretty good for their first match. I specially loved the false finish and reset spot, it was beautifully done, and Punk's comeback right afterwards felt huge. Cool moment with the Pepsi Plunge as well. The finish with Wardlow was interesting, It might look like a step back at first, but Wardlow can now say MJF defeated Punk only because of him, adding tension to the storyline, while also setting up the possibility for a MJF/Punk rematch that I hope will be shorter and more violent.