MikeCampbell

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.

Kazuchika Okada vs. Kenny Omega is most likely winning match of the year, but if this is any indication, then L.A. Park vs. Rush is going to win feud of the year! This is an absolutely insane brawl with intensity that makes you completely believe that they want to rip each other's heads off. The dq finishes to the falls don't feel like screwjobs or copouts. If anything, it's impressive that the ref's let them get away with as much as they did before finally having to step in and call it off. I was taken aback a bit by how quickly Park seemed to recover from the piledriver. But, I'll admit that my on-again off-again lucha viewing has been 'off' for a few years now, so maybe that's more the norm now. And, it's not like Park just took the move and jumped to his feet like the bullshit that used to run rampant in NOAH. As soon as Rush started showing off that picture frame, I knew that it wasn't going to end well.

My favorite Saito memory was the first NJPW Tokyo Dome show from April of 1989. He wrestled one of the Russians that Inoki brought in, Whaka Evelov or something to that effect. Saito put him over in the end, but before doing so, he clobbered him with some brutal lariats.

Another batch of them were added today, including one of my all time favorites, The British Bulldogs.

Today, Demolition and both the 1989 and 1992 Ultimate Warrior Coliseum Videos were added.