El-P

Raise hands, guilty as charged. I really did love the hell out of it then though. No idea what I would think about it now though. But is it relevant ? I mean, maybe the fact I loved the match enough to think that way THEN it actually the only thing that matters. I'm not gonna get a cookie if I submit a balanced list of great matches or something. I know my approach has dramatically changed over the years, and although I'm annoyed like everyone with the recency bias or the fact anything merely quite good is called GREATEST THING EVAH especially on the WWE side of things, I dunno, I'm enjoying living in the moment and not caring about anything else.

The whole wedding is exactly why IMPACT is my favourite show right now, and has been for a year and a half. Dreamer cracked me up when he reacted to Swann saying that it was one woman for your whole life with "Wait, no, that's not how it works". Good balance between the comedic part of the first half and the serious angle at the end. The fan of LU in me really enjoyed to see these guys working a major angle in another context, and IMPACT has done a really good job making me care about Cage as a character (which really wasn't the case in LU). Again, Santos involvement truly helped. And Callihan is the best heel/heat feud worker of the last two years. He again proved it. Can't wait to see the whole story unfold culminating with Tessa finally winning the big one at the end. Oh, and Ken Shamrock looks ridiculous. Again, they did a really good job making me care about this one. Also, I did not realized the "new" IMPACT was beginning this week. What a week indeed. I wonder if IMPACT will remain my favourite once AEW Fusion kicks in. The one thing they miss as far as presentation goes to me is a guy like Don Callis.

Wow, that's sad. I remember him most for his Big Titan work in Japan, both in FMW in the early days and then NJPW. He even was part of the 1998 G1 Climax. Decent big man worker.

Yeah, I mean, the idea would be to have some actual fun with this. Like, the opposite of a GWE debate. You know. Just have FUN with this nonsense. Because... No shit !

Meanwhile, their Anniversary show looked like nothing special at all. Dynamitas vs Caristico/Mistico/Valiente was excellent as expected, but I would not subject myself to that long-ass cage match. Negro Casas lost his hair, which I guess makes it a big deal, but still...

Well, maybe. I was in a super optimistic mode maybe. It happens sometimes.

Post G1 fatigue is the right way to put it for me. But I was wrong, because as always NJPW big matches are pretty much the state of the art. So I watched the other big stuff from the Destruction shows. KENTA vs Ibushi was very good, but I also am tired of the Bullet Club run-ins. Never liked that aspect of Gedo's booking. I recognize it works and is well done, but to me it's tired and was too americanized. KENTA is perfect in this role, because he's clearly not his old self physically. Goto vs Takagi was a great match, as Takagi is pretty much the perfect opponent for Goto. Then again, he looks like the best opponent for everyone. Perfect way to build Goto for the IC title match. And well, Naito vs White was also just great. White is so awesome at everything at this point. It's crazy how far he has come. He's also atotal heat magnet. Naito looked way better than in the G1 too, super crisp and healthy. That tag match was still the best match of these three shows. Incredible stuff.

Mitsuharu Misawa Blessing: One of the greatest pro-wrestler ever, legit brillant, was responsible for the greatest pro-wrestling ever before the current NJPW era. Curse: Geeks who thought he was great because of lots of elbows and lots of headropping.

No it would not. But there you go. It's been a crazy ass week, really, with Punk maybe going back, Rush & Dragon Lee leaving CMLL, NXT ratings being not very good and all. But next week is gonna be ridiculous. Probably gonna watch NXT at least for the first opposite show, because come on, it's fun. Hell, we should do a weekly NXT vs AEW thread and have fun with what worked and what did not and which show "won" each week (I would guess NXT has the advantage here). As long as it's not stupid nitpicking and haterz/stanz business and is all in good spirits, it could be a fun thing to do for a while.

Next Crown Jewel in beautiful progressive and democratic Kiev, soon, on the WWE Network.

Wow. Would Rush go in WWE after his ROH contract is up, now that his pal Andrade is having a good time ? An actual Andrade/Rush/Charlotte faction doing some Ingobernables-like stuff would be quite cool (well, anywhere but in WWE because they book like shit, but you get the idea).

Well, thanks for hyping this to me, because I wasn't about to watch otherwise. Fucking incredible match, easy MOTYC to me (not that I'm keeping score or anything, but that just says how much I thought of this one). Ospreay vs Phantasmo is gonna kill everything at KOPW, most likely.

Holy shit indeed. Rush was the king of Arena Mexico. That opens so many doors for these two. I mean, I guess Konnan has their number... Rush & Dragon Lee vs Psycho Clow & Dr Wagner Jr. anyone ?

Not even the fact he actively drives me away from watching stuff I would probably watch more often he wasn't there calling the matches ? It's not a slight dislike on my part, I mean, like I said, he distracts me from being able to enjoy what happens in the ring. You can't zone him out. I'm not saying I would watch NXT religiously if he wasn't there, but him being there assures I can't *really* enjoy anything from that show, which is a pity since there are people there I would enjoy a lot. Damn, if NXT had the usual French announcers (Chereau & Agius), I would definitely watch it. With Mauro, I just can't.

The Rock'n Roll Express are cool as a novelty act having decent matches at 60 if paired up with some great tag teams like the Briscoes or LAX. People pop for Ricky Morton doing Canadian Destroyers, which is as crazy as Terry Funk doing a moonsault. But come on now. The one thing interesting would be to see Ricky interact with Chase Owens, as it's been told a billion time that he's been trained by him (they even kinda made it an angle of sorts during the G1, with Chase requesting Kevin Kelly to stop mentioning it) Watched ZSJ vs Tanahashi, these guys can have a terrific match in their sleep while taking zero risk.

I watched a bit of the "first" NXT episode from last week. Bianca Belair is so bad ass (well, Io and Candice too). But the presentation is still too WWiffy to me to really want to follow this, and Mauro makes it impossible to enjoy anything anyway. He's just so fucking unbearable (Beth is useless, so she's better in the sense where you can zone her off easily). I may watch some pimped women matches from time to time and maybe the Takeovers if stuff Kushida vs WALTER happens.

WWE oversaturation that's for sure. And that's without even mentioning that CMLL is on Youtube and can be watched at least every Saturday (for the big Friday show). No shit. Indeed. Absolutely no need to watch something because it's the "main" product and you "have to" watch it. I guess I'm gonna watch IMPACT, AEW, MLW to a point, plus some weekly CMLL matches, some AAA, the big NJPW shows... plus some indy shows I would enjoy. Ok, I want to get some time to have, you now, a life !

Wow, I was thinking he would end up in AEW after his cameos on BTE. He works much better as a heel than a babyface, so hopefully that's what he gets. He's not a great worker, but he can do a lot of great stuff (kinda like RVD in his prime I guess, although much less annoying), so with the right people working with him, he can be quite fun to watch. His finisher is the shits as it looks like it couldn't hurt a fly though. But he had a bunch of really good stuff in Lucha Underground and IMPACT over the last few years. Just keep him a heel. He's 39, so I guess now is the time to make as big bucks as he can, as his priorities were always to get acting work in the later years.

Stop make me want to check out NXT !!!

Damn. That's what AEW should have done with the Dark Order instead of that goofy gimmick.

And this week, the 2/3 falls match between Dynasty and the Hart Foundation was a huge, huge letdown. Everything feels wrong with this company at this point to me. I know these guys are better than this, but I thought it was an extremely mediocre, run-of-the-mill and very poorly laid out match with an endless directionless shine segment, a heatless short heat segment before the first fall and then you had like seven minutes to end the mach on a complete fuck finish. They gave Aria Blake exactly nothing to do (she showed how good she was in the ladder match, so why ?). And the MLW crowd was as dead as ever, when MJF can't barely get heat, it's pretty bad. I'm gonna keep on until the PPV, but really... Hope Salina's contract runs out and she gets money and exposure elsewhere.

I love this new format, with guys just telling stories of the road while sharing room service. Funny how these "flippy guys" and "freakshow" put a whole lot of thoughts into their stuff. Also, they spent a whole five minutes basically putting Candice LeRae over, which I thought was pretty damn cool.

Damn, I forgot this happened. I definitely should check this one out...

It's odd, the G1 Climax has been by far the most fun I had watching pro-wrestling in the last two years, but I could not really get into the Destruction shows big matches. I will surely catch KOPW. Agree the final two matches aren't that exciting (I loved Okada vs SANADA in the G1 though) and Mox vs Juice and Phantasmo vs Ospreay should steal the show. Liger vs Suzuki should be a lot of fun too.

The Gordon episode was fine but honestly, if you've seen the great Timeline edition he did, it's really nothing new. Russo ? Yeah, really... I dunno, I really enjoy Sean Oliver (the contrast between him and Conrad Thompson as an actual interviewer is so striking when you listen to them back to back), but thus far I'm not getting much from this stuff. I sure won't listen to anything involving Russo, so maybe when an interesting guest with new stuff to talk about shows up.