Reel

Two straight raws that were pretty good, not as good as last week, but another solid 3 hour show.

I thought it was good, I would have gone at least 3 on it, but considering how much everybody loves josh barnett blading, eating double-arm ddts, and taking chair shots in 'shootstyle' matches, I'm not surprised people didn't like it.

Isn't he kinda bad in his U-Style match with Ilyukhin? Don't really remember much of it, except thinking, 'yeah Kawada doesn't really need to do this stuff. He's Kawada.'

I think it comes down to, for me anyway, the difference between a good TV match and a very good TV match, however you want to quantify that, just isn't that significant. So like, I'm in 2009, and Christian is having the best matches on the show for sure, but are they that much better than any other match on the show? No. So, for sure it comes down to what you value, and I don't think it's so much peak, in the way Rick Rude in WCW is a short peak, but in that these TV matches have a ceiling that isn't all that high. In fairness though, I'm not watching the PPVs, which are certainly part of the equation, but when I've heard people talk about those guys, a lot of it was on the basis of these TV matches.

I'd say a lot of that started in his second Dragon Gate run.

Dragunov's reign has been so-so. Just had an empty arena match with Jordan Devlin, which was very weird because fans only came back like a month ago, but they did a good job of explaining why the match was happening. Meiko Satomura and Blair Davenport had a good match on 1/13 and a rematch today that ended in what seemed like a shoot injury. Walter had his farewell match against Nathan Frazer, who was 'can't-miss no-brainer superstar Ben Carter' until he signed with WWE. Good stuff. Noam Dar is my guy, though. Not the best wrestler on the show, but the best character and still a very good wrestler. He had a British Rounds match with Wolfgang last year that was really good. Like MOTYC stuff.

I've been putting some WWECW on in the background lately. I know a big part of Christian and Matt Hardy's cases for GWE are their title reigns here, and maybe it's just me, but these 'very good' tv matches they're both supposed to have on this show, I just don't see it. Like they both have plenty of good matches, but they're just good, not great, and especially not all-time great stuff. Especially Hardy.

Its actually NXT: UK, but its very much a tree falls in the forest scenario.

It was also not very good, so the 'why would he change his approach, it worked before' defense sort of goes out of the window for me. It was bad and too long. He should have tried something else, and that criticism goes for pretty much everything post-2016 for me. He just isn't that adaptable. I will watch the Tsuji match though. 6/16, Kizuna Road? @Boss Rock

There was at least one Garden Rumble in the mid-90s that I believe Owen won.

wardrobe malfunction

Bron just grabbed a gator roll off of a drop-down and transitioned it into a delayed vertical suplex. Real good shit.

I think the Marty Scurll match from All In went a long way in convincing people that he wrestles every match the same way, I'm not sure that's 100% correct, but on that card, in that spot, against that guy, there was room to try a different approach, and he decidedly didn't.

I thought KO/Theory and Rey/AJ were both pretty good TV matches. Chad Gable continues to be the best TV character in all of wrestling, and the closing segment, with Ronda's clunkiness and all, was fun. A very good Raw.

chickenshit, i believe

None of them had music anyone would recognize unless they maybe paid for a Cyndi Lauper song for Richter, none have been on TV in almost 40 years. They would all get the opposite of a pop.

Every UFC now is some giant dick vs some guy nobody likes and they do like 700,000 buys.

Ronda back for another all-time great run.

did Melina botch that? looked like there was supposed to be a spot on the apron and she fell off.

I see they're gonna have Sasha carry the entire rumble again.

Big E cut a fired-up promo after he lost the belt (which will look great in the 'Mania promo package), and has been less than ho-hum on SmackDown since. He's gonna win, and last time I looked he wasn't the favorite, so I'd bet on him. I think Ronda doesn't need to be in the Rumble. She can just show up and roll the footage from the match where she put Becky over and that match is made, so I'm going Bianca for back-to-back wins.

The Aramis/Vikingo match from this week's Azteca show is good. Not 'go out of your way to watch it' good, but if you like those guys, or are interested in checking them out it's worth your time.

I have a clipped version of the Nagata match, I'll upload it. Update: Its on archive.org called Brock Nagata, DM me if you can't find it.

I really like the stuff with Steamboat. I think it is pretty underrated actually, and Shane has his moments in ECW, but injuries caught up with him sometime between 96 and 97 and he's just a different guy at that point. I'm with Clayton, I made a list last year of people I'm considering and he's on it, but it's a rather big list, and I don't think he sniffs the top 100, but I'm not ruling it out.

I caught the show when the Moxley match started, I'm not big on him so I was never gonna like it, and the last match having the surprise of Gage and Tremont, and not FTR, seemed like a bit of a dud. The other thing and I'm not saying the GCW show wasn't sold out, but it did strike me, as a person who has seen bands there, that you could fit a lot more people in there than GCW did.