Sean Liska

I wasn't excited for the last two Takeovers and they over-delivered so I'm not counting these guys out until proven otherwise. No guaranteed fantastic Revival match on this show, though.

I just started watching CWF a few weeks ago and I can't say enough about this group. I'm seriously thinking about ways to make it from Chicago to NC for a show because I'm so impressed. Whoever the brains is behind this thing clearly has a love of old-school wrestling, but also a feel for what works in 2017. That's so hard to find. It's the best low-budget TV show since 95-96 ECW, really impressive how good it looks. I see big things for them in the future if they can get some buzz.

Night 2 thoughts. I'm surprised there hasn't been more conversation on these shows online, is my hunch correct that the people calling the Okada-Omega match the best match ever only watch like 4-5 NJPW shows a year while miserably sitting through each episode of Raw? Blue Panther Jr., Henare, Jushin Liger, Tiger Mask vs Ephesto, Gedo, Jado, Raziel – Perfectly fine little opener here, some heel stooging, some comedy, bit of a heat spot and solid finishing run, enjoyed. Stuka Jr vs. Okamura – Better than I expected, nice showcase for Stuka. Kushida, Ryusuke Taguchi, Soberano Jr. vs Bárbaro Cavernario, Okada, Will Ospreay – Okada is so much more fun on these shows. Between stuff like this and his match with Fale, I could grow to be a big fan of the guy if he weren’t forced so often to do the NJPW singles main event epic style that I generally don’t like. Anyways, a really fun match, some quality comedy, some spectacular spots, just a nice example of why these shows work. Barbaro unfortunately wasn’t able to do much with his injury. David Finlay, Dragón Lee, Hiroshi Tanahashi, Juice Robinson, Titán vs Bushi, EVIL, Hiromu Takahashi, Naito, Sanada – I’m repeating myself but another exciting well put-together match. I’ve always enjoyed the NJPW Korakuen shows more than the big shows where they try to have a bunch of classics. Mistico & Volador Jr. vs Euforia & Último Guerrero – Again we visit one of CMLL’s biggest rivalries. Very good version of their usual match, if you haven’t seen these guys together a lot you’ll likely be pretty impressed. Atlantis vs. Rush – Ah, this was good fun. I’m such an admirer of Atlantis, I feel like he’s an underrated figure historically. He has 33 years as a reliably very good worker and big star for the same major company, working the same buildings every week for decades, keeping up with the young stars to this day. He’s like Undertaker plus another ten years of full-time quality work. Anyways, this match gave me what I wanted with Rush being a jerk and Atlantis making spirited comebacks and we even got some blood from a stiff chair shot to heighten things. Maximo vs. Hechicero – Hechicero headlining, my heart if fluttering. Hechicero is one of the smartest workers around and this was a solid match bolstered by Maximo being really over with this crowd. Fun show!

Anybody watching this year? Here are my bullet point thoughts on Night 1, enjoyed it quite a bit. Night 2 looks even better. Juhin Liger, Soberano Jr., Tiger Mask vs Gedo, Jado, Raziel – What you would expect from the NJPW guys with some spectacular high-flying from Soberano to spice things up. He’s a very talented young luchador and it’s always good to see him get opportunities. Máximo Sexy & Stuka Jr. vs Hechicero & Okumura – Tiger Hattori’s reluctance to check Maximo for weapons is buys. We all know how good Hechicero is. Nice match, it’s fun to see the CMLL guys put together something that’s a little different than what they would do in Mexico. Atlantis, David Finlay, Hiroshi Tanahashi, Kushida, Ryusuke Taguchi vs Bushi, EVIL, Naito, Rush, Sanada – Now we’re talking, Rush reunited with the family that he birthed. And he’s in full dickish form here picking on poor Atlantis. That would be an Anniversario main event for the ages. Nice showcase for the best heel in the business and a very good match. Juice Robinson, Mistico, Volador Jr. vs Euforia, Okada, Último Guerrero - Mistico and Volador against Euforia and Guerrero is part of one of the great current lucha rivalries. Okada is usually fun on these shows. This is a solid version of the usual match these guys have, the crowd really eats it up, Mistico was really over for some reason. Titán vs Hiromu Takahashi – Hey look at this, they spend the body of the match telling a story of Takahashi working over Titan’s injured knee and it’s really well done. Now, they completely ignore it during the finish stretch but I appreciated the effort. Turns into more of a series of near falls at the end which isn’t totally my thing but it was still worth watching. Dragon Lee – Barbaro Cavernario – Ah, this is a match the internet will gravitate to, with its big spots and cool reversals and near falls and all the stuff the kids like nowadays. I’m a big fan of both guys and thought it was well put together so enjoyed it too. Bit of a flat finish though, sounds like there was potentially an injury that affected things.. I really enjoy these shows. It's fun to see both rosters pushed out of their comfort zones, and we get this unique melding of styles once a year. Also fun to see the CMLL guys in front of a more traditionally responsive crowd who hasn't been watching this on a weekly basis for decades and is more easily impressed.

WWE going after NJPW or CMLL in their native countries would be interesting. I don't think they'd succeed but it would be interesting to watch. But I keep seeing people who want to show how clever they are by talking about WWE trying to kill the indies just like Vince killed the territories. Stop. It's not close to the same thing. Why would HHH and Regal be trying to kill independent wrestling when they've seen how much money they can make off of poaching guys from indy promotions and featuring them? How is it even worth their effort and time? Vince can't just write a check to buy out something like ICW if he really wants to? It would be a drop in the bucket for him. They want to make money off of these non-threatening groups. WWE never even really did anything predatory with TNA and they had national TV and Mania headliners on their roster.

Enjoyed the CWF show again quite a bit this week. I've never watched them before this week and now I'm all in. Thanks to Dylan for directing me towards these guys.

I believe Atlantis-Ultimo Guerrero from two years ago holds the lucha gate record so that needs to be included.

How have I not watched CWF until now? That's some great stuff, I didn't know wrestling like that still existed. Whoever is behind it has a great mind for the business.

Yeah but I don't think SD is anything like TNA. They're playing off some reality-based stuff but nothing that a casual fan can't keep up with.

"Russo" has become such a negative term, but there's a way to do Russo stuff productively. Vince McMahon turning heel, playing off of real life insider stuff in the Montreal Screwjob, was "Russo" booking and it was the biggest thing ever.

I'm obsessed with the great TV runs of all-time more than I enjoy looking at individual great matches or wrestlers. Is SD as good as 80s Memphis, 90-93 AJPW, 1997 and 2000 RAW, 95-96 ECW, your best stuff ever? No, but I'd put it at the next level right beneath. This Ryan Ward kid really has a distinctive voice in his writing and Vince seems to be giving him a lot of rope. It feels very much like the NXT that Ward wrote in how episodic it is and how much character development there is. I'm not someone who usually pays attention to the writers under Vince since it's all Vince in the end, but the similarities with peak 2014-2015 NXT are too striking and the differences with Raw are too striking. It's just such a well-written show. They got people heavily invested in a Miz-Ziggler feud in 2016. I was at the point where I figured there was nothing left to do with those guys, and this is the negative of no territories because there's nowhere for them to go, but they've been given new life. How about the idea of Rhyno and Heath Slater getting over and having a genuine feel-good moment when they won the titles? You've got to be smart to make that work. They took two boring stale entities in Orton and Wyatt and have given them some juice as a team. This current version of chippy veteran John Cena is great. They had months of TV to kill between No Mercy and TLC and somehow got through it in a creative way using James Ellsworth. There's a sense of purpose and story progression to each show, which has been missing from wrestling, it's been too easy to just watch PPVs and the show the night after and then the rest is filler until the next PPV. I can't say enough about it and I know nothing like this lasts forever in WWE, something always happens to screw it up, so I'm just enjoying every week. Cena-Corbin next week, give me the good Cena working as a traditional babyface and not PWG Cena and I'll love it.

I feel like people are understating Dave's influence. Remember Mick Foley in his book talking about how important it was to him to get praised by Dave so he could get more bookings and advance his career. Certainly his influence has increased since 1988.

All right let's forget Bayley. Is Dave encouraging a generation of young workers to eschew character work and psychology in favor of matches like Okada-Omega? Does he have that influence?

But this WK main event has become this internet community sensation. Not sure that happens without Dave. Bayley wasn't tweeting about NJPW's big September main event or whatever.

Dave's influence with modern workers seems pretty big to me. Look at how he's played to at PWG shows. Like, Bayley tweeted herself watching the WK match. Does she do that without Dave's praise? I'm not sure.

I love Dave and have been a sub for over 20 years, but is he becoming a net negative for the industry? With this six-star rating, you can see a whole generation of young workers thinking this style is the path to success. Indies already aren't really for me anymore, I can just see a future where every wrestler thinks they need 12 finisher reversals and kickouts to do their job. I never thought I would be so fond of WWE forcing everyone to work a chinlock into their matches.

Do any lucha experts know how many times CMLL has done a show with this type of lineup? I'm going to use this show to try to convert some people to lucha, this is as good of a chance as I have for anything outside of a big mask match.

The Memphis/Lucha connection is an interesting thing that might be worth a separate thread because I love both so much. A lot of it for me is just that I'm a very easily bored person. I've never seen Negro Casas just sit in an armlock for three minutes like you'll get plenty in 70s-80s AJPW. How many times in 80s footage do you see Jerry Lawler just work a headlock for several minutes without doing anything interesting. They're always doing something. They both take advantage of face/heel structure to come up with lots of neat things in matches and payback spots to keep things moving. Yeah, you might get sick of Lawler playing hide the chain, but he's doing something, the match is moving along. Negro Casas and Jerry Lawler are probably my two favorite wrestlers of all time. The term I use for both Negro and Memphis is "relentlessly entertaining".

Meltzer at least recently has started to really enjoy CMLL and tweet about the Friday night shows when there's a great match. That's the best chance lucha has of making in-roads in hardcore fan circles. It took me like 20 years to figure out lucha so I get where people come from but it's sad that so few people get to enjoy the magic of a Negro Casas.

As a huge Memphis mark I love this stuff too, thoroughly enjoying.

I'm surprised Vince hasn't fought this change from what I've seen.

I was there! You're not missing much!

Jarrett to me was so consistently ahead of his time and nailed angles that other bookers blew. - nailed the invasion angle with Savage and didn't let ego screw it up. First true Ameican invasion angle? - maybe the first true shoot angle with Lawler-Snowman, 4 years before ECW started doing them -shoot style wrestling with Lawler-Snowman! In 1990! 6 years ahead of Taz -the first appearance of the heel Mr McMahon character that became the most successful heel of all-time, 4 years before it was on national TV - Renesto as a heel authority figure 10 years before Bischoff and McMahon - the Tupelo concession stand brawl, 15 years before that style was popularized with Foley/Nastys and ECW. - popularizing the teen heartthrob babyface tag team - music videos - a complex face/face feud with Lawler and Mantell in 82 - just random other stuff. The biggest ratings in Raw history were in May 99, when one week had every match booked by heel Shane McMahon and the next week every match booked by babyface HBK (show unopposed due to NBA), with the second week generally being the reverse of the first week. Memphis did this almost exact same two-week story ten years earlier with Gossett and Marlin

While hyping this on Twitter, Bryan talked about classic rivalries like Brisco/Funk, Flair/Steamboat, Austin/Rock, etc. But he also included Lawler/Dundee. God bless this wonderful man.

CMLL is running a legends card next Friday night. The tercera is Atlantis/Fantasma/Mascara Sagrada vs Casas/Satanico/Fuerza. I'm way too excited for that rudo team.