Brynn

Watched most of Rampage last night before I fell asleep. Finished it this afternoon. Thought it was a fine episode, nothing super special. I liked Hager vs. Kingston as it was pretty much just a hoss fight. The six-man tag was fun. It was the first time I’ve ever seen Aussie Open (at least that I know of). For someone who isn’t really familiar with New Japan, it’d be nice if they actually took the time to explain who and/or what United Empire is and who Ospreay and these dudes were instead of just assuming everyone knows. That being said, I thought it was a good match but the commercial break really took me out of it.

I like HBK too! So that’s at least two of us then!

I had a conversation with some other wrestling friends on Discord earlier today about this. The main point of conversation was why Adam Cole keeps getting shoehorned into all of this stuff? Me personally, I feel like he's being shoved down everyone's throats and it's starting to backfire. I groan now whenever I heard his song played on either Dynamite or Rampage and I think "ughh, him again?" I get the point of him being need to kept relevant because he won the Owen Hart tournament but still, feels like he should be out of the title picture for a bit. I'd much rather see Page vs. White or Okada in a singles match.

Stampede 1/16/87 Cuban Assassin & Viet Cong Express #1 vs. Ken Johnson & Jeff Wheeler Kerry Brown vs. Ron Ritchie Ted Arcidi & Duke Myers vs. Bill Kazmaier & Mr. Ito Great Gama vs. Ben Bassarab North American Title: Mukhan Singh [c] vs. Owen Hart First thing I noticed on about Stampede is that it has this down-home folksy charm to it, right down to Ed Whalen and Jim Davies on commentary. The matches were all joined in progress but that's fine with me. The angles and what not are the important thing. There's this heel manager in the first match named Zhivago or something like that and he's carrying around a "martial arts stick" as Davies called it. In modern terms, it's known as a kendo stick. After the match, Cong and Cuban just beat the daylights out of poor Wheeler with the kendo stick while he's draped over the ropes. The two singles matches (Brown vs. Ritchie and Gama vs. Bassarab) were fine, nothing really stood out to me worth mentioning. Seeing Arcidi in Stampede after his WWF run and less than a year removed from his WrestleMania 2 appearance is really weird. And here he's feuding with Bill Kazmaier, who's only a few years away from joining WCW and carrying a giant globe on his back. The whole deal here was Arcidi and Kazmaier will eventually tangle one-on-one but they seem to be avoiding each other. Not really sure who's the heel and face based on the promos. The title match was fine but the bigger deal here is Singh. For those who only know him as Trucker Norm/Norman the Lunatic from WCW and Friar Ferguson/Bastion Booger from WWF, you should really see this. He's a great heel and is just constantly pissing off Ed Whalen and the Harts. The in-ring work is really good too where he's bouncing around and not afraid to use his size to his advantage on offense. Show ends with Whalen telling someone (can't remember if it's Singh or Great Gama) "I don't want to talk to you no more!" and then issuing his customary sign off.

Like seriously ... how does a venue mess up names that badly? Doesn't WWE or someone send out an advance notice as to who's advertised and what to list on the website?

I know this isn't YouTube or Dailymotion but ... for those who are interested, the ENTIRE Herb Abrams UWF library is up on Internet Archive. It includes two versions of the Beach Brawl PPV (the live version and the home video version), a couple unreleased shows and the full Blackjack Brawl event. The only thing's not posted there are their VHS compilation tapes. https://archive.org/details/HerbAbramsUWF/ Side note: I'm only posting this because today (June 9th) is the anniversary of the Beach Brawl show.

Fell asleep watching Dynamite during the main event. Moxley vs KOR was fine and nothing against KOR but the outcome of that was totally predictable. It was a fine match though. I think I'm more excited to see Will Ospreay even thought I'm an extremely causal viewer of New Japan. I'm only familiar with him for some matches there but mostly for his matches in ROH. Next week's Dynamite should be pretty wild with Wardlow destroying 20 geeks, Jericho vs. Ortiz in a Hair vs. Hair match and the three-way ladder match.

The battle royal has been turned into one of those 21-person "Casino Battle Royale" deals with a mystery joker entrant. From the ones I've seen them do, I'm not really a big fan of that whole format with groups of four coming out. It's just too much too fast and turns into a giant mess. Besides the battle royal, PAC vs. Buddy Matthews has also been added in addition to Moxley vs. Battle Royal Winner and Hangman vs. David Finlay. Should at least be a fun show tonight!

Thanks! Yep, I came across that playlist the other day! I started with the 1/1/88 episode (not sure why I randomly picked that one) and rather enjoyed it. It was nice and easy to watch and the action was pretty good. I'll check out some of the 86/87 stuff based on your recommendation and go from there.

I just can’t get over the goofy “mountain of omnipotence” phrase Edge said in his promos once and WWE (well, Corey Graves to be exact) just ran with it. No one would say that phrase in real life and I’ve never heard anyone I know use the word “omnipotence”.

I was catching up on Raw from the live recap on the Observer site and I'm all confused by this Balor/Edge/Judgment Day stuff. Is Edge turning face now to feud with Balor going into MITB and SummerSlam? Was this a last minute thing they had to do because of the Cody Rhodes injury? Sounds at the very least like a refresh for Balor and I was thinking during the six-person tag last night about how good Balor vs. Edge might be.

I'm tempted to tune into Raw to see what he has to say. However, I've got a "Survivor" finale to catch up on!

I've heard about the Big Egg show but I don't think I've ever seen it.

I've heard the ROH PPV rumor in July as well. I'm looking forward to it if it does happen. Hopefully it'll be on HonorClub too (if that's still a thing by then) so I can watch it on there and not a standalone show that you have to order through FITE. In terms of the Briscoes, aren't they signed to Impact? Even if they are, it's not out of the realm of possibility for them to be on the show since AEW and TK have worked with Impact in the past (most recently with Deonna Purrazzo and W. Morrissey appearing on Impact on the same night). However, this is all presuming that the show is actually happening that is. Side note ... if the show does happen, will this be where they announce if/when ROH comes back to weekly TV somewhere?

I just watched this recently as well and was wondering the same thing! A friend of mine used to have a DVD called “Best of Blackblood in WCW” years ago that I borrowed. I remember it being mostly TV squashes, and angle or two and the GAB match. I don’t remember much else about it or the buildup to the Big Josh match. Then again, I haven’t seen a lot of WCW TV from 1991 either. Don’t think he (Blackblood) was around much after the GAB match though.

I’ve been watching completely random stuff recently: Watched Great American Bash 1991 for the first time in a long time. Still not a good show but, bless them, they tried. Some random thoughts: * Ron Simmons and Oz was a fun little match and I still get a chuckle anytime I see Oz’s entrance because of how elaborate and ridiculous it is. * I thought El Gigante and One Man Gang was going to be better than it was. My mind exploded trying to decipher Kevin Sullivan’s pre-match promo about the lady with the third eye, banshees, a death cart and other assorted nonsense. * Big Josh vs Blackblood was bizarre. A lumberjack and a supposed executioner wielding a giant AXE competiting in a lumberjack match. * Still don’t understand why a scaffold match was necessary for the opening match. It could’ve been way better as just a standard tag match. Aside from that, watched Impact Rebellion from April once it was uploaded to Impact Plus a few weeks ago. I’m glad I didn’t buy it on PPV because it was not that great of a show. I really liked the X-Division three way and JONAH vs. Ishii. Alexander vs Moose was good too. More recently been going down a YouTube rabbit hole of Stampede Wrestling from the 1980s. I’m not too familiar with Stampede, aside from what I’ve read in Heath McCoy’s “Pain and Passion” book and the few matches WWE included on some of their DVDs over the years so this is all new to me. I’m not really watching it in any particular order, just as I kind of find stuff in good quality on YT. If anyone has any recommendations as to what to check out for Stampede and where to find it, let me know!

Thanks for sharing! I love reading through old newsletters like this and just discovering random little tidbits I never knew before. I find it really weird that Barbarian and Warlord were managed by Tito Santana of all people. Maybe because I don’t remember the Strike Force injury angle all that well? Was that the catalyst that kind of led Martel to eventually breakout on his own as The Model? Also, Sean Mooney wasn’t *that* bad. Sure, he was a bit dry but I think that worked. On old shows I’ve watched, I like the event center recaps. His banter and dry humor with Lord Alfred on some of those old Coliseum tapes was really fun to listen too.

Don’t know how many of you here are into Stardom but New Japan and Stardom just announced a joint show on November 20th. No matches or anything were announced but I think that sounds pretty interesting. Out of curiosity, has there ever been a joint show with a men’s and women’s company in Japan? My knowledge of Japanese wrestling is pretty limited.

I'm truly amazed at what Cody did tonight. To go that long in an extremely physical match with pretty much one arm, gives me a whole new level of respect for him. That's not to say I didn't respect him before but this just was way beyond absolutely anything. On a personal note, I know how hard it is to get things done when you have a limb that doesn't work or, in my case, missing (my left leg). It's not easy. So for him to have a near 30 minute match at that high level and be in tremendous pain is absolutely incredible. I'll go so far as to say that's probably one of my favorite Hell in a Cell matches of all time now. As for the rest of the card, I really thought that NXT last night was going to be hard to beat but tonight's show pretty much did just based on the strength of that main event and the women's three way match.

I'm watching this because honestly, I never miss a WWE "premium live event" or whatever they're calling the PPVs now. I heard about the Cody injury earlier today and that's the match I was looking forward too the most. However, the women's three-way should be pretty good. The six-person mixed tag should hopefully be fun but the Edge/AJ matches have not been exactly what I was hoping for. I think a sleeper on the show will be (Austin) Theory vs. Mustafa Ali. If they get time, that should be really fun! For those who are interested, full card is: * Hell in a Cell: Cody Rhodes vs. Seth Rollins * Judgement Day (Edge, Damian Priest & Rhea Ripley) vs. AJ Styles, Finn Balor & Liv Morgan * Handicap Match: Lashley vs. MVP & Omos * Raw Women's Title: Bianca Belair vs. Becky Lynch vs. Asuka * Kevin Owens vs. Ezekiel * US Title: Theory vs. Mustafa Ali * Happy Corbin vs. Madcap Moss (I think this is a No Holds Barred match?)

Hey everyone! I'm your friendly neighborhood nerdy wrestling girl with one leg ... Brynn! Yeah, I know ... my name is weird. It's pronounced like "Ben" except with an "R" after the "B". First off, big shout out to Loss for helping fix my registration issues! I've been a fan of wrestling for as long as I can remember! I don't remember exactly how I came across it but it was WWF Raw sometime in 1995 and the first pay-per-view I remember being hyped was that years Survivor Series. I was an avid WWF watcher through the Attitude Era and beyond. I did watch WCW when it wasn't up against Raw. My first exposure to ECW was the TNN show and I watched that weekly until ECW shut down. Since WCW and ECW shut down, I watched mostly WWE along with peeking in on TNA here and there. I also borrowed tapes from some friends and I watched mid 2000s NOAH, Ring of Honor, and short lived promotions in the 2000s like World Wrestling All-Stars. I also watched a lot of my hometown group HWA. I've spent a ton of time watching old stuff on Peacock/WWE Network that I missed out on. I also watch a ton of old stuff on Impact Plus and stuff on YouTube that catches my interest (I've been on a Stampede Wrestling binge on YouTube currently). Fast forward to today ... I still watch tons and tons of wrestling. Dynamite and Rampage from AEW every week plus the majority of their PPVs, NXT on occasion when there's nothing else on or if it's a special episode. I also watch the big shows from Impact and I never miss a WWE "premium live event" (NXT included in that). When I'm not watching wrestling, I dig shows like Yellowstone, South Park, Bob's Burgers, Simpsons, Great North, any of the Star Wars specials on Disney Plus and also competition shows like Survivor and Big Brother! In terms of other sports, I'll watch hockey and football. Maybe some baseball if it's a team that interests me but they really lost me after the lockout this past winter. Anyway, I've babbled on too long. I'm excited to be here and always up for learning more about the wild and wacky world of pro wrestling!