MikeCampbell

That's hardly something that Cole can be blamed for. NXT Main Events have been like that since Gargano vs. Ciampa in 2018, and since Cole became a main event player every Takeover Main Event he's had has been against Gargano or Ciampa in some form. How have Cole's NXT Title matches outside of Takeover, and away from either of those two looked? He's had televised defenses against KUSHIDA, Riddle, and Balor. He wrestled Dunne at Surivor Series, and Tozawa on the EVOLVE anniversary show.

Same here, brother! My father watches this every week and raves about it. I finally checked out a random episode and the first thing I see is Filthy Tom Lawlor bringing out the real toughest Von Erich, Rip Von Erich the son of Lance! Suffice to say, I am on the Filthy Tom bandwagon.

The Survivor permier, plus Chicago PD on NBC returning off of a major cliffhanger. But, I think that was hands down the best Dynamite episode since the show started in October. Literally, the only thing that I didn't care for was the schmozz at the end with all the tag teams. It just felt like a poor excuse to trot them all out and push the battle royal. Dr. Britt's reference to Whataburger was great. In just a few weeks, she seems to have found her footing on her heel promos. MJF vs. Jungle Boy looked like it would have been right at home in a Jim Crockett ring, for all the right reasons! Santana and Dustin both had killer promos, and being in Austin, the crowd was great during Dustin vs. Sammy. No Cody, which seems like a bad thing, but it gets over the fallout from the lashes, and I can only imagine the intensity we'll see from him in Atlanta this week. And, AEW's marked improvement the last few weeks, seems to coincide with Tony Khan taking on a more hands on role in the creative end.

This is a damn fun match, from two of the best. There's a lot of long matwork, but neither is ever lazy about it, you always get the feeling that they're both struggling to either escape the hold or to keep the pressure on. Fujiwara even has some fun with a monkey flip (in a UWF match!) to escape a crab hold. They even throw down and exchange some nasty shots to each other, with the crowd eating it up. Kido's win looks like a fluke, but it shows that even a single mistake is all he needs to finish you off. I won't go as far as calling it the best match from the original UWF, but, it definitley ought to at least be in the discussion!

I have no idea why this was chosen to eat up space on the commercial tape that feataured matches from the 1/20 show. Especially when the 1/20 card had a match between Yamazaki and Fit Finlay! Credit where its due, Yamazaki tries. But, Maeda just can't be bothered to do much of anything to put the kid over. Like Sleeze says above, maybe this was intended to rehab Maeda after losing to Sayama in January. But, it's a pretty awful way to do it. Maeda takes a young gun, who he clearly doesn't view as much of a threat to him, and goes for close to twenty minutes.

I get why people are down on the whole Marko Stunt thing. I'm not a fan of it either, but I understand why it needed to happen. 1. They'd just done a hot angle to make Lucha Bros into dirty heels. 2. With Luchasaurus hurt, there was literally nobody else to take his place that would make any sense, with how the brackets were structured, they couldn't just hold off until Luchasaurus healed up. But, once Pentagon caught Marko with that superkick, it should have the beginning of the end.

I remember way back when fans at ROH shows would wave dollar bills at Lacey. Yes, Austin Aries never felt the need to have someone sent to him backstage so he could 'teach them to respect women.'

ROH has put out another statement on the Bully Ray incident from last weekend. It more or less says that fans can cheer and boo, and that wrestlers and fan interactions are supposed to be part of the show, but Bubba crossed the line. What sticks out to me is what it *doesn't* say, which is anything about how ROH expects it's fans to behave and conduct themselves during live events. Which tells me that the ROH office and/or Sinclair Brass must not have thought that anything the guy did or said was exceptionally out of line. There's also this great piece from Cageside Seats. According to a guy in the comments, Bryan Alvarez said that he had some friends who attended the show, and they absolutely back up the fan's story as far as how things played out at ringside.

Bubba put a response on Twitter, and nothing he said refuted any part of the original story. There's simply no way that any of this makes Bubba or ROH look good. The fan may have been a mouthy asshole. But, Velvet was the one who made the virgin remark, and Mandy spit at him. He didn't do anything physical. If Velvet is so sensitive to having someone bring up who she's banging, then she ought to do a better job of making sure it's not public knowledge. Now, if she'd gotten out of rehab recently and the guy made some comment about booze or pills, that's a different story. Would this even have happened if Velvet wasn't banging Bubba? I could just picture someone like Veda Scott coming up to him and talking about some mouthy kid in the front row that got under her skin. His likely response would be "You're supposed to be a professional. If you don't have thicker skin, find something else to do!" I'm hoping like hell that some wise ass fan yells out to Velvet that her boyfriend should teacher her how to suck dick.

I liked this one a lot more than their 2/3 Falls match. There were still things I could have done without, like the finisher stealing and the zillion superkicks. But, they did a good job of using the hurt limbs to get themselves ahead in the match, and also to get themselves out of trouble. After the Destroyer in Young Bucks match in AEW was a totaly throwaway, it was nice to see it used to give Cole a near fall, and then to set up the finish.

So many things to like here. There's plenty of stiffness and hate. There's questions surrounding the Bucks being able to get on the same page after a few mishaps. And, if you know the history between the Bucks and Lucha Bros it only makes the match better. I could have done without the Destroyer on the apron and the double package pile driver spots, only becuse they ought to be match breakers, and neither was. But, I loved pretty much everything else.

There were things I really liked about the main event, but it came off like Johnny was having the same match with Cole that he would have had with Ciampa. Like Ricky said it's a bloated epic, that I wasn't terribly fond of last year. Hopefully, with Johnny no longer chasing something, he can have a different type of main event in a few months at the next Takeover.

Last year Barnett was making noise about reviving the Japanese UWF. How do the Bloodsport matches, in general, compare to the style of UWF/UWFI/U-Style/etc?

I went into this hopeful, having enjoyed their January match for the 3-Crown, and also having enjoyed Akiyama's Carnival matches against Hansen, Kawada, Kobashi, and Ace. But, I can't say that this did a whole lot for me. It just didn't strike me that Misawa really cared to make Jun look good this time around, he totally no-sells the opening Dragon screw. Later on, when Akiyama works over the leg for a bit, Misawa makes his comeback by kicking him away and him doing a dropkick of all things! The knee doesn't factor into his having trouble doing any of his usual moves, including a bridging Tiger suplex for a near fall. Akiyama gives Misawa his best shots, and Misawa just sucks it up and makes it look easy to put him away. And I echo the sentiments on why Misawa even needed to be here in the first place? Given that he was taking some time off after the Dome, there's a storyline right there of having him miss the finals and lose the titles, leading to his time off.

I just randomly watched this today, and heard something eerilly ironic from Bischoff. "Look at Benoit's eye, that guy is a nut!"

I've watched this twice now, because I wanted to watch it with a fresh mindset after getting over my markdom of the Revival finally getting the titles. The only real flaw that I find is that neither of them does much to put over the struggle of kicking out of near falls. Even when Gable gets the early German suplex on Dawson, he just lays there until after the ref gets to two, and then kicks out. There's a couple times when they make that idea work, like the blockbuster/German suplex and the near fall where Roode pushes Dash (I think) into Dawson to break up the pin. But, other than that, they worked a good pace, the work was generally smart, and the match was well worked for the time constraints that TV forces them into. I haven't seen a shit ton of stuff from this year (which is one reason that I enjoy lurking in these threads so I know what to check out), but, the only thing I'd probably put above this would be the NXT Tag Titles match from Takeover Phoenix.

So, have they actually acknowledged what "EC3" stands for, or is everyone just supposed to more or less know and/or accept it?

My initial reaction to him being sent to 205 Live was "I wonder who he pissed off?" Does anyone think he'll go to AEW rather than New Japan? I don't know if he and Cody would be tight at all from being in WWE together. But, certainly Omega vs KENTA, or even KENTA/Someone vs. The Bucks would be something of a dream match. Edit: After talking about things with a friend, KENTA/Pac vs. The Bucks would be a helluva dream match for them.

I was thinking about this the other day. It used to be that people would be future endeavored every other week. Now, barring Enzo and Cass, I couldn't even tell you the last time or the last person that they released.

I don't think they'll be letting Dash and Dawson go. If anything, Monday night seemed like they were finally getting ready to go all the way with them, with them finally getting one over on the Lucha House Party. I could see them letting Mike and Maria go, they obviously don't value them as much of a commodity. I haven't seen anything reported yet, but a friend of mine said he'd read that Dolph Ziggler also requested a release. He's another that I don't see them wanting to lose.

In the ten years since you originally started this, have you used the phrase "ambitiously stupid" at all?

This reminded me a bit of 'Mountain's matches with the Undisputed Era, except that it wasn't nearly as good. This felt too long, and there were at least two other sequences that would have made perfectly good finishes.

I used to be a huge mark for Kanemoto when I first got into New Japan. But, watching this after so many years, I have to roll my eyes at the taste of my younger self. It has things that I really do like, like Koji needing to change up the ankle lock for the finish, his selling when AKIRA does the Musasabi to his legs, and the bit where he does the senton, but instead of getting a heatless near fall, he drops punches on AKIRA instead. I also liked that Koji's first ankle lock, game from the ground, since he was still hurt from AKIRA's STF. Even the stiffing each other early on worked, in the vein of showing their disdain for each other, before they moved onto working each other's leg. But, Koji's no-selling is so frustrating! There's the kip-up after the blockbuster, and even the finishing stretch has Kanemoto throwing out spin kicks and jumping knees, on a supposedly bad wheel, before he gets the last ankle lock.

I think it's possible to keep her strong. I think that the Rumble should be Ronda vs. Nia, with Ronda going over. Becky runs in afterwards and KO's Ronda with the SD Title belt, and then puts Nia in th Disarm-Her and "breaks her arm" as revenge. The crowd will love her for that, and then you can build to Ronda/Becky at Mania.

Heyman yelling to Corino "Excuse me, dickhead!" always cracked me up.