Edwin

Also: UFC exec: Brock Lesnar has not re-entered USADA drug-testing pool, suspension still frozen

He fought the same he's fought his entire MMA career... Confirmed he's not ready for what exactly? He's a former UFC HW champ and has wins over Herring, Couture, Carwin, Mir and Hunt... lolololol what? The only guy with reasonable stand up from the guys I mentioned is GSP... The rest rely on their grappling because they have no stand up skills. You really think Lesnar can't beat the JDS who's looked terrible recently and got KO'd by Stipe, got KO'd by Reem a couple of fights ago and got steamrolled by Cain twice? Yeah, don't know what to tell you there then if you don't think Lesnar can take him down and grind him to a decision win... Lewis gas tank is horrible. Lesnar can over power him and grind out a decision easily as Lewis will gas early just trying to avoid being taken down. Struve is an ideal opponent for Lesnar as he's primarily a lanky kickboxer which Lesnar can over power and taken down constantly fairly easily. Arlovski has a questionable chin and is on a 5 fight losing streak including 2 brutal KO's and 2 subs. If Lesnar lands a big right hand on him, he's going to sleep. If not then Lesnar can grind out a decision over him. Browne is on a 4 fight losing streak and has been KO'd brutally twice in 2 of those 4 loses. Another guy Lesnar can either KO or grind a decision over. You don't follow the UFC closely, do you? This has been one of the worst years in the companies history. Horrible PPV numbers. Stipe can't draw a dime. Cain either. Brock on the other hand has proven is a draw. This is a moment in which the UFC need Brock desperately. Their 2 biggest draws aside from Brock are Ronda and Conor; 1 of their draws has been knocked off and the other is banking on a huge boxing match against Floyd Mayweather, so they desperately need Brock at this point.

Huh? You couldn't be anymore wrong if you tried. Lesnar looked like a monster. He beat a top 10 HW in Mark Hunt. He fought smartly. Hunt is primarily a striker and Lesnar just bulldozed him and held him down for 15 minutes. How is that not meaningful? This isn't kickboxing... Were you really expecting Lesnar to stand and bang with Hunt? Also, if you thought that wasn't meaningful, then you must not follow MMA closely. GSP, Matt Hughes, Jake Shields, Jon Fitch, etc. all fight with a similar gameplan and they're some of the GOAT welterweights. Seeing how JDS has fallen, I could see Lesnar taking him down constantly and riding him for 15 or 25 minutes to a decision win. Aside from JDS, Lewis, Struve, Arlovski and Browne are guys Lesnar has a good chance against. Lesnar is a guy with enough name value to warrant a title shot after 1 win, so match him up against Stefan Struve and catapult him into a title shot against Stipe afterwards and he's set.

I purchased 2K17 and played it for a day and gave up on it. Every single thing, even a punch, kick or slam seemed so contrived that I got frustrated. I miss the older WWE games from about 5-6 years ago when things were much simpler, like simply pressing L1 to executed a finisher.

Driving to Lakeland for ROH yesterday after Pancakes and Piledrivers was the worst idea I've had all weekend. What an uninteresting, unengaging event that was. I realized if you don't follow ROH currently, it's hard to get into. The constant fan overreactions to everything just made things far worse. Pancakes and Piledrivers has been by far the most entertaining event I've been to all weekend aside from the obnoxious "This is wrestling!" chants during Ricochet vs. Shane Strickland.

Glad I'm not the only one. Except he's kinda like a lame CM Punk replacement. The intro is so forced. Is he supposed to be a satanist ? I mean, the kabalistic symbols, Aleister... Just say it, he's a satanist follower of Aleister Crowley. Of course they won't because Bray Wyatt is in the house, so he's just *dark*. With *tatoos that symbolizes his beliefs and life experiences*. Fuck, he's totally a satanist version of CM Punk. Not impressed though. He looks like every hipster tatoo parlor employee from the 11th arrondissement in Paris. Who practice yoga. I'm not afraid. The kind of guy you order a vegan burger from. Anyway, he kicks a whole lot. La Som... Almas does a Naito big up. Cool. Match was kinda there. Almas is just not working. Jury's out on Crowley, he looks to have some potential, but nothing special. Might as well give him some Deefheaven track for his intro though. Three-way dance is already overrated as fuck in this thread. It was good. Not great. Way too long. Too much cutesy spots which come with the 3-way style (and are why I don't usually care for this gimmick). Whenever the AOP are in control, the match drags a whole lot as they just aren't very good. The samoan guy especially looks lost at points. The other four look great, so I longed for those great, classic matches they delivered the previous year. AOP aren't bad, but they are like the worst Head Hunters ever. Or the best Master Blasters ever. Ellering is useless. Anticlimatic finish. Hey, I'd totally have a drink with Asuka at the swimming pool and talk shit. This girl seems like the coolest. Okay, so this is the best match on the show thus far. Like Ember Moon quite a bit from what I see here. The look, the work, the attitude. Too bad she gets your typical generic bad WWE music. She needs to come to Princess Nokia's "Kitana". Not sure those "I don't give a fuck" and "you can suck my dick" would sit well with the PG bullshit, but it would be so bad-ass and fitting. Anyway, this felt like two girls beating the shit out of each other. Kinda rough in spots, but at least this didn't look like a dance or manufactured "epic" (see later). Got better as it went, with a nice escalation in the violence and bitchiness. Hell, Asuka cheated to win ! That was cool ! I'm totally there for a rematch, this was very good/excellent. Nakamura is nothing special anymore. His entrance is verging on self-parody, because he's always the exact same. The less said the better about Roode's, which is forced as all hell. The Glorious bit is awful and doesn't even get boos from these idiots in the crowd. Pandering-to-smart-audience theme song to get a sing-along reaction is the worst. And I don't buy Roode's Rude/Orndorff cosplay for one minute. He's just not a main event player. Never has been, even in TNA. Super solid undercard worker, but not a top guy. He's so Triple H/Jeff Jarrett in 2000. This is dull. And long. Nak is soooo cruising. Oh man, the worst NJ elbow exchange ever now... Ends in a very obvious "look at us having an epic" mode... I fear the exact same stuff for every big Mania match. Mixed bag. Opener was fine. Tag match was pretty good but too long and cutesy. Women's match was really good. Main event was boring. I've never seen a review about a show I could agree with more than this one. Nothing really I'd add, except the fact that I enjoyed the 8 person tag the most on the card. And yeah, I'm glad they kept the women's title match simple. No need to overdue and spam finishers for 2.9 counts so fans can get erections chanting "This is awesome!" and "This is wrestling!" Bobby Roode is just horrible. I have a co-worker who always tells me how he's a "good wrestler," but I ask him what makes him good and he just says he's a "good wrestler," i don't even know anymore what a "good wrestler" actually is as he's told me Kurt Angle is a "good wrestler" because he knows all the moves and what not which is something I guess... Anyway, that's not the case here nor there.

Riding back home from EVOLVE 80... My wife and me really dug the heck out of Keith Lee v. Ricochet and Matt Riddle v. Drew Galloway. The Gatekeepers squash was quite enjoyable too for what it was. The rest was what it was. Keith Lee v. Ricochet reminded me of those old Makahn Singh v. Owen Hart matches I saw years ago from Stampede. May not be the best comparison, but it's the first thing that popped into my head. I wish they would've put this match on later down the card as I even I got exhaused after it was done and it was a hard act to follow. MOTN imo. Riddle v. Galloway was quite intense and a lot more one sided than I would've preferred, but it was a great way to start the card as it was kept short. That piledriver table bump from the apron to the floor was brutal. I could do without Galloway's rambling before the match though.

I'm jealous of you guys going to the Joey Janela show. I wish I could stick around after the EVOLVE show for that, but I can't my wife and I have to work on Friday morning.

The wrestling starts tonight. There's actually a show in Orlando tonight. The Orlando Sentinel has a schedule: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/sports/wrestling/os-wrestlemania-week-schedule-of-events-20161223-story,amp.html Also Jake Roberts will be at the Improv in International Drive on Thursday.

My wife is awesome and is turning into a fan and is stoked for WM, so I told her if she'd come with me to other events as she went with me to an EVOLVE show in Orlando some months ago and she enjoyed the heck out of it so she accepted. So our schedule for WM weekend: 1. EVOLVE 80 - Thursday 2. CHIKARA Turn Left - Friday 3. The Wrestling Revolver - Saturday at noon 4. ROH Supercard of Honor - Saturday afternoon 5. WWE WrestleMania 33 - Sunday I was contemplating going to CZW BOTB to watch Penta 0M namely and so we wouldn't have to drive to Lakeland for ROH, but my wife preferred to drive to Lakeland instead of watching some random dude in CZW get his faced carved up or some gruesome unnecesarry spot. Also Penta 0M will be at the Wrestlig Revolver and Jeff Cobb, so all's good for me. NXT was also a probability if tickets weren't as expensive for re-sale on Stub Hub and the card wasn't as weak as it is on paper. Not going to RAW or SDL because I'm sure I'll be burnt out by then.

haha really? I can't stand PWG and the "atmosphere" is particularly one of the things I dislike the most.

Hey guys, I don't think I've done a formal introduction yet, apologies. My name is Edwin, I've been around these parts for a about 9 years now and I still haven't introduced myself. I've been watching wrestling for most of my time as I mentioned in the PR Wrestling history thread, my uncle used to wrestle there and my dad drove him around when he was in same town we lived. I don't have many memories of this though as I was a child... Anyway, aside from being here for about 9 years now, I've been on DVDVR for 15 or so years. I know they I was around when they had that famous green and yellow theme. I've just had different usernames. I used to post WWC and IWA results from Puerto Rico there about 12 years ago. In the 9 years I've been on here, I've been more of an on and off user as I'm not as big a fan of wrestling as I used to be. I've kind of fallen out of it/got burned/bored with it. Anyway, I'll be around every now and then and will share my opinion on whatever I watch/have watched as I've watched quite a bit of everything, although I don't follow the current product as much and I just mostly watch older 80's and 90's footage on the WWE Network or on YouTube. I occasionally go to NXT or EVOLVE events when they're in Orlando, but outside of that and the WWE PPV's, I don't really watch anything else currently.

I don't have the set, but am familiar and have seen the majority of these matches and a lot of them are online, so I thought it'd be OK if I shared my opinion on some of them... This is one I don't recall ever watching, however this was a little odd... The cage is awfully small and also seemed it could fall apart at some point. It's so small the ladies can extend their hands and grab the top of it. I'm guessing neither tried to escape climbing over the top as the cage was so small they could climb out fairly easily. Not a great match, but not a significantly horrendous match either. Women's wrestling was never big in the territory. AJW has put on way better cage matches than this with real size cages. They teased the big slam from Wendi on Monster Ripper, but they never delivered. The escape teases did bring in the drama though. The finish I thought was excellent though. They managed to make a normal escape significant and different from the norm.

Brutal, bloody brawl. Carlos does one of the nastiest blade jobs I've ever seen. There's a puddle of blood in the corner and the camera catches a great angle of it near the end. Aside from Stan Hansen, I would say Hercules is the other guy who really puts some beating on Carlos as proven here. Despite the brutality dished out by both ends, this went on for way to long and would've benefited if it ran 5-10 minutes shorter as a lot of WWC matches seem to run around the 10-15 minute time frame at best. Also the editing for the commentary hurt this as you could barely hear the hot Puerto Rican crowd in the background.

This is far from a great match and it's mostly just a Terry Funk nutcase show. Terry comes very, very close to creating a riot and Hugo had to address the crowd to calm down because it was starting to get out of hand because of Terry picking fights with fans. This is an odd pairing. The Road Warriors don't really work in a territory like WWC and Dory is just there to protect Terry. Terry however is ideal for the territory and he's the only one who truly is a highlight in this match. You can replace the Road Warriors with any other face tag team and you get this match. Unless you're a fan of Terry and want to see him come close to watching a riot, I would say skip this.

Chicky was such a heat machine back then. His epic promos calling Carlos Colon a monkey and every other racist noun in the Spanish dictionary really made him the most hated heel in Puerto Rico and in my opinion one of true greatest heels of all time. He was a true crap talking coward. He would insult the faces and when they were going to attack him he would hide behind Victor the Bodyguard or another top heel. I've heard Homicide call him the Puerto Rican Ric Flair which I partially agree with. Invader #1 was his complete opposite. He was a super over and adored by the fans because he represented the brave Puerto Rican working class and a lot of the fans identified themselves with him. Before this time period, Chicky was a former Jr. Heavyweight champ and was more of a manager to bigger heels than a main eventer and Invader was more of top superstar in the company, so that's why it's worked more towards Chicky taking a beatdown and him even hiding under the ring early on in the match and relying on low blows to fight back. It's also why the stipulation works and makes sense -- in the eyes of the fans, Chicky wasn't a guy good enough to beat Invader and just being able to survive 15 minutes with someone so high up the ranks as Invader would be considered a success for Chicky. This is far from a wild bloody brawl which you'd expect from the territory and far from being an all time great classic match, but when put into context it serves it's purpose and makes perfect sense. This is also a match you need to follow the territory closely and to watch in context with what El Boricua has provided to really enjoy. Invader having Hugo continuously countdown the time limit over the mic throughout the match added to the drama, but this is something you have to know the language to truly catch. The commentators also bring up the pressure Invader must be under as the time limit continues to run down and he runs out of time of saving his career. Invader cheating to win was ideal for them to be able to continue to build on this feud even further as it's Invader beating Chicky with one of his own tactics and something Chicky could later use to claim he was robbed. The post match haircut was excellent, but shaving the mustache and his chest just put this over the top as it was even more humiliating, plus it's what the fans were calling for.

I believe that's the plan given Mauro Renallo will be doing commentary with Corey Graves and it's airing (live I guess) on Tuesday's at 10:00 PM which is once SmackDown Live ends.

I think I can add something to this topic. My uncle used to wrestle a lot in WWC, Hercules Ayala. I only met him as a kid, so I don't have many memories from back then, but my dad still keeps in touch with him and told me he caught up with him in his last visit to Puerto Rico last year. There's some awesome stories my dad has about driving Hercules around the different territories in the North East in the 80's such as having Kamala freak him out, anyway... If you go outside the 80's, into the 90's and onwards there was quite a bit available. Let's add some stuff to what El Boricua already mentioned first. In the 90's, WWF aired Metal on Saturday afternoon at 6:00 PM on Telemundo. In this time frame it was thanks to Victor Quiñones. Yes, the same one from IWA JAPAN. Correct. However not a lot of people had cable down there back then. Now almost everyone does. I had no idea Titanes en el Ring aired in PR. PRALL? I don't remember them... Do you have anymore info on them? In the 90's, they aired Promo Azteca on WAPA TV at 10:00 AM I believe it was before WWC Super Estrellas de la Lucha Libre aired. WWC had a working relationship with Promo Azteca which is where the Invasión Azteca came into to play. WWC sold it as a AAA invasion, but it was truthful a Promo Azteca invasion. They just used AAA as it was a more common organization name with local fans. Let's also not forget to mention that XWF which was taped in Universal Studios also aired on WAPA TV at 1:00 PM after WWC aired. WWC also had a working relationship with them and several XWF guys wrestled in WWC for a while. Correct. Later on in the 90's, there was AWA on channel 7 which was run by Barrabas. They built some big shows with some big WWF names like Savio Vega and the Undertaker. Savio Vega was a member of the Nation of Domination and he was portrayed as such. He was in a feud with el Bronco over the top title. Bronco was a heel, but he turned face when Savio attacked him. The Undertaker was in a feud with Fidel Sierra. They ran an angle where Fidel went crazy after the Undertaker put in a casket. They were scheduled to have a big casket match on one of the shows and Savio was supposed to face Bronco in the main event, but the show eventually got cancelled as they had lost a ton of money and the company went downhill. They went from having a spot on TV on channel 7 and running in big arenas with big name WWF starts to wrestling in someone garage in front of 25 people in a couple of weeks time. Savio and Bronco eventually fought in someones garage in their last couple of shows and the company eventually closed. IWA was around then in the late 90's, early 00's and was run by Victor Quiñones. This was WWC's true competition in Puerto Rico and the company that came the closest to having WWC close up shop. Quiñones had a ton of connections in the WWF as he was in charge of many of the foreign talent and Super Astros I believe. Quiñones even managed to get the Rock for an IWA show. The show was huge and was called One Night Only. He also got Hardcore Holly to wrestle a weekend along with Chris Benoit and Chris Jericho who had a tag match opposing each other with Huracan Castillo tagging with Benoit and Miguel Perez Jr. tagging with Jericho. Gangrel, Edge, Kane, the Hardy Boyz and Kurt Angle are the other WWF names I can think of that worked for IWA in the beginning. In the later years IWA worked with TNA for a bit and they got Samoa Joe to wrestle for them a couple of times and they also booked Savio Vega vs. Necro Butcher which was wild. I don't think this match ever made tape though. It might have, but I never saw it. They also managed to book Bryan Danielson when he was released for the first time from WWE. IWA later on built their own stars and began signing the big names from WWC including Ray Gonzales and Invader #1. After Quiñones died, IWA feel apart quickly as he was the one with the big bucks and who knew a ton of wrestlers and promotors. During IWA's strongest moment, WWC also had a relationship with a smaller indy organization in Puerto Rico called NWS which was run by a doctor who was a money mark. They even had a 6 sided ring like TNA. They ran the WWC vs. NWS angle, but that didn't do good and NWS ran a couple of events before they eventually closed. IWA also worked with other smaller indy organizations such as EWO, but they didn't have the money NWS had and they didn't get much out of IWA. There's always been a ton of smaller indys in Puerto Rico, but they've never made TV. It's not very good either.

I thought it was a one time special where they would try and put over the cruiserweights, but reading it says it's a weekly show and with a name, day and time like that, I guess it will be recorded after SmackDown Live.

I love what I've seen wrestling wise of Stampede, but the TV is hard to watch with matches always being JIP and Ed Whalen being the worst commentator ever. I remember some Stampede fans thinking highly of Johnny Smith. I never thought he was that great, but again I haven't watched any of his matches in forever. I may need to go back and watch some of his stuff to see. Also there's no way Ed Whalen is worse than the WOS commentator who was on the verge of an orgasm every time Sayama did a faint spin kick or something along that line. Kent Walton is worse than Ed Whalen? Jesus, Mary and Joseph. My god Edwin, go and see your local Otolaryngologist. ... As I mentioned before: "I haven't watched any of their footage in years..." (talking about Stampede), so my general opinion was based on what I had seen recently, which was this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1O89soFGp2E and it seems that who's ever doing commentary is on the verge of an orgasm each time Sayama moved.

I love what I've seen wrestling wise of Stampede, but the TV is hard to watch with matches always being JIP and Ed Whalen being the worst commentator ever. I remember some Stampede fans thinking highly of Johnny Smith. I never thought he was that great, but again I haven't watched any of his matches in forever. I may need to go back and watch some of his stuff to see. Also there's no way Ed Whalen is worse than the WOS commentator who was on the verge of an orgasm every time Sayama did a faint spin kick or something along that line.

I haven't been following close enough, but you throw all these guys together in one match and what will the other 2 matches look like? A possible women's division elimination match and what will the other be? New Day and the Golden Truth vs. Rhino, Slater, American Alpha and someone else?

Off the top of my head: Dean Ambrose -- Holy crap has this guy sucked for the majority of the time since the Shield split. I was big on him pre-WWE as Jon Moxley working in Puerto Rico and East Coast indys and then in the Shield he was good (as they worked well together). Then when they split and he began running the single Lunatic Fringe character he just started working the same routine and all of his matches have been very predictable, stale and uninteresting. It's like he realized he got over and stopped caring. The Brock feud was interesting, yet the blowoff Mania match was horrendous. That Jericho feud was horrendous too. Seth Rollins -- His post Shield heel stuff I thought was good, but he's been very uninteresting since his return from the injury. ECW -- As a company. I used to be a big fan when I wasn't exposed to other none mainstream wrestling in the mid 90's. I thought they were revolutionary and different and thought it was awesome. Fast forward to latter and being exposed to other stuff and my opinion on them changed entirely. I also feel a lot of their heavily praised matches haven't aged well; the MPro 6 man tags for example. Those guys put on way better matches on a regular basis in Japan than that one. Sure it was revolutionary at the time, but if you've watched your fair share of MPro, you'll know they've put on way better matches than that. I know many people will dislike the RVD vs. Jerry Lynn matches now, but back then these got a lot of people IIRC. I've rewatched some of their earlier shows in the WWE Network, but even then those shows weren't great.

Another random question: What is the general opinion on the Cobra, George Takano? What is the general opinion on Stampede Wrestling? That's a promotion that never gets talked about at all. I haven't watched any of their footage in years, but I remember digging some of the Owen Hart vs. Makhan Singh matches, but I'm sure those won't appeal to everyone.

Does everyone still dislike the Tiger Mask vs. Dynamite Kid series? I know they were praised over 10 years ago and then everyone just turned on them years later. I'm rewatching them as I haven't seen them in God knows how long and I just got done watching the first one and it was pretty bad. It seems like every Sayama match I watch is just an exhibition of the cool highspots he was pulling off over 35 years ago in Britain and Japan.