MikeCampbell

The women's tag triple threat from Wednesday night was a lot of fun. The biggest standout for me was honestly Lainey Reid, her crucifix bomb may have been the cleanest one that I've ever seen, and the Blue Thunder she caught Kendal Grey with was every bit as smooth as when Takeshita does it.

After she pretty much got kicked out of the NXT NA Title scene, the initial theory was that Blake Monroe must be getting called up. Now, the word is that there are no plans at this time. I said it as soon as the incident with Thea happened: There may not have been any hard feelings as far as the agents, producers, writers, etc. in NXT, but that it would leave a bad taste in someone's mouth. I can practically hear HHH's response to someone suggesting it: "She couldn't kick out in a match that she was supposed to be winning, and you think she's read for prime time TV?"

I saw a post saying that he was supposed to be part of the whole mixed nuts deal. I can imagine him asking to be let out of it so that he can fly home and spend the holidays with his family. It's not like he was going to make or break that match.

It was a good show, but not a great one. The two C2 semi finals seemed to wear out the crowd, which was a surprise since Chicago is usually such a hot market for AEW. I was really taken aback by the lack of angles or storytelling coming out of the show. There was Okada's method of beating Takeshita and Moxley's promo after the C2. But nothing as far any real return or debut. I guess they'll start laying some groundwork Wednesday night.

Between the Jet Speed vs Sky Team tag match in Arena Mexico a couple of weeks ago, and his C2 run thus far, Kevin Knight is having the run of a lifetime. And on 12/19, Jet Speed go back to CMLL. Knight vs Neon and Speedball vs Mascara Dorada for the NWA Historic Welterweight title.

The only matches that didn't do much for me were the women's 4 way tag, and it was still perfectly fine, and the Young Bucks trios match. It wasn't bad but there's no way they were following Moxley and O'Reilly and then Briscoe and Fletcher. My motn was the tag titles match, with the women's title being just a step behind. I'm definitley OK with Joe as the champ. I do wonder if Hook turning was always the plan, of if they saw that him and Kingston as a team just weren't working out and pulled the plug.

That'd be the All Atlantic Title, which strangely included the flag of Japan on it's design. My original prediction for the first champ was Mascara Dorada, since he's someone AEW clearly likes and he's the sort of dude that could do a defense on a Wednesday night AEW show, and then do another one two days later at Arena Mexico, and then another one on 1/4 in the Tokyo Dome. But, Sky Team defending the trios straps against the Callis Family on the Full Gear pre show seems to have put the kibosh on that.

I'd say that it's almost certain that the National Title winds up with Ricochet.

I had high hopes for that Okada/Dorada match, and.....yeesh. I don't know if it was nerves or the size difference being an issue but they just didn't click together at all. Dorada is lucky he didn't break his neck on that last top rope spot.

A couple of observations from the women's matches last night. 1. Tay beat Taya Valkarie in just over two minutes and layed out everyone in MXM TV. 2. Hyan and Maya got close to 8 minutes with a the much less pushed team of Riho and Windsor, and not only got to show off some of their stuff, but had Jon Moxley putting them over on commentary. I'll grant that it's possible these are both reactions to last week's drama, but it sure looks like they want to get TayJay over as bad asses headed into their tournament match with Marina and Megan. And it also looks like that they're throwing a bone to Hyan and Maya for being good sports last weekend. Given that Miranda and Nixon were first on TV in a backstage segment before being in the ring, is it really a stretch to think that they'd have done the exact same thing as Hyan and Maya, had they not decided that last week's quick match didn't benefit anyone?

You probably won't like hearing this because it's another Vince-ism, but it's the truth. They were given an opportunity. They could have spent those three minutes making Tay and Jay look like killers for their upcoming tournament match, and that leads to more bookings and getting more time to work. Hell, look at how over Max Caster got this year by getting his ass kicked in two minutes or less.

Bruh, if I hadn't seen this post, I wouldn't have even remembered they were on the show last week. And WTF is "their brand" right now? Whatever, enjoy being the top women's team in the NWA.

Oh man, this blew up like crazy on Twitter/X. With folks arguing about whether or the lineage of the National Title ended in 1986 with Nikita merging it with the US Title and that Mondo's belt is a seperate entity that shares a name, or if Mondo's title is the same one since it was an NWA Title. I personally think that, since all the titles that Crockett was using carried over to WCW and then WWF, that the person with the best claim to being the actual National Champion is Ilja Dragunov.

I had to fire this up yesterday after social media blew up over Gail Kim criticising Riho, which turned into Gail Kim vs Dave Meltzer. I never really bothered with TNA during these years outside of reading the TV tapings and ppv reports, so I knew that this feud was highly praised at the time, and yeah, this is pretty fucking great. Whether or not one wants to agree with her over Riho's believability (and for the record, I don't), it's hard to point to something like this as a gotcha to her. Everything they do and the way things pan out makes perfect sense. Gail mostly strikes and tries to work Kong's arm after the missed charge, and whenever she tries to get loftier than that, like her attempt at a rolling cradle, Kong makes her pay. Even Gail's flash cradle pin works because Kong was too busy trying to powerbomb a referee and Gail got her over with the cradle more due to physics than her being super strong.

You can probably blame Mike Tenay for popularizing the phrase on this side of the Rio Grande.