Matt D

Dumping this here since I forgot to before. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/mar/24/bolivia-cholitas-female-wrestlers-cholitas-discrimination-stranglehold

He's a much better heel.

They could put the belt on him again?

Now we're not going to get the Miz/Lesnar tag team I wanted. I hate MMA so much.

Write up: The pre-match antics stressed Matt's heel advantage, having picked the time and prepared the place and gotten into Jeff's head by destroying his precious lawn. Even though this is, for the sake of comparison, an empty arena match, they played to the crowd at home the whole time, starting with Matt intimidating the referee and then with his heat-garnering violin rendition of "Cool, Cocky, Bad" for an audience that can't even boo him. Despite that, Jeff arrived, albeit sans theme music, to cut it off. Matt refused to show ass, though, keeping his back to Jeff until he made it into the ring. Here, a brief note about the early camera work. Matt's stable at this point consists of a 90s-esque WWF gardener gimmick elderly Virgil of sorts, his wife as an annoyingly supportive valet in multi-colored garb, his baby as a mascot, and a legion of nameless drones. In order to suspend disbelief on why the drones (bruised from an earlier pre-match assault on Jeff which he fought off with his own symbolic instrument) aren't interfering, I think we're supposed to imagine that they're the ones flitting around the ring managing the camera work. What we got out of that, at least in the early going, were a lot of Dunn-ian quick cuts. Instead of the usual WWE style that whips about right at the point of impact so that the moment of it is dulled and lost, this switched right before, so that we almost fell into the impact of the blows. On to the match itself. Matt ambushed Jeff first with a quick punch, winning the first few seconds of exchange until he was shrugged off of a bulldog. Jeff was too quick to rush in (obviously thrown off his game by Matt), and ran into a foot, but since we're in the shine, he recovered quickly and hit a far too early superplex, which, in the context of this match, was basically an overglorified armdrag. Due to the TV format, and presumably the production costs for a company that may or may not be funded by racist corporate biker twins and/or over the hill (also) bald, moody artiste types, they only have around ten minutes of actual in-ring work that they can show. By symbolically using the superplex in this function during the feeling out process/shine, they define the initial scope of the match immediately at a higher point, which will allow for the later explosive escalation. Jeff followed the superplex by bouncing off the ropes and hitting a bit splash for a nearfall. While a strange move for him, it's also a heightened version of a normal pinfall which hits the higher tone that they were in the process of defining. Immediately thereafter, Jeff pulled out the trellis, a table stand-in given the setting. While yes, this wasn't just Matt's homefield advantage, but also the strange redneck distopia that Jeff was used to, the fact that he didn't even sell, as a character, the strangeness of finding the trellis under the ring, took me out of the match a bit. Matt was going out of his way to react to everything and, at times, it felt like Jeff was just moving on to the next spot. He could make it work as a flustered stoicism at times, but here I was half expecting for the spot to fail, and for him to simply continue to pull out multiple trellises until he hit it correctly as Matt just had to lay there, like a modern-day Sabu at his very worst. Regardless, the spot did work correctly and led to another nearfall. Much like the superplex functioned as an armdrag, however, Matt's twist of fate out of nowhere, his full on finisher, were this not a gimmick match, served as a TRANSITION. Once again, it's a precarious balance. If at any point of the match, they lost the beat, lost the tenor and tone, failed to symbolically level out the point where they were at, the entire structure would collapse and the match could never build to the later points it was trying to reach. The ladder would be missing a number of rungs. Instead, due to the lack of time alotted, and the dramatic end point, they started higher up the rungs and as such, Matt's finisher served as a transition and a transition only onto his well-scouted (inoculated?) brother who was not nearly worn down enough to be put away by it. This allowed Matt to get back into the match, the escalation continuing now with the kendo stick shots and the introduction of the actual ladder, the images of violence climbing further up those proverbial rungs, with the choking in the corner and the outright biting. It's only when Matt stumbled back towards reality and went for an actual move, in this case, the side effect, that Jeff was able to elbow out and, in a stroke of synergy, used the phony Twist of Fate and his own Swanton finisher as yet another transition, though really one that would be an extended hope spot, not cut off by any quality of Matt's, but due to Jeff's own reckless abandon, which has been costing him matches and momentum within matches for well over a decade. He climbed the tree (ladder-assisted) and went for the Swanton onto Matt who was prone on a ladder; Matt moved, though this wasn't as definitive as it should have been. Jeff still went for the pin after this and Matt had to scramble to regain some distance and the advantage. They could have punctuated that moment better, especially considering what was to come. Now, as the third act began, and the hope spot was cut off due to Jeff's own recklessness, Matt, having seen his brother's resolve again first hand and knowing he couldn't defeat him through sportsmanlike means (especially after the two defeats that led up to this match), brought the world's most destructive chain out from his tights. For a match that used a superplex as an arm drag and finishers as act break transitions and hope spots, the only place to go was to high explosives. Matt launched the fireworks across the ring as Jeff desperately defended himself with a trash can lid. It seemed all for naught as the smoke cascaded around them. Matt, limping, selling, calling out, with another weapon in hand stalked around the ring to finish the job only to find that Jeff, hulked up and in the midst of his babyface comeback had gotten the "chain." As fireworks flew back the other way, Matt ran from the comeback, only to get chased down by his brother, at the height of his righteous fury and power. Here, however, Jeff slipped on a banana peel (or a splotchy bit of mud) and Matt was able to put on the late match sleeper, assisted not by the ropes, but by a lake instead. Companies have house styles. You know when watching a WWE TV Tag Team match when they're going to go to commercial. A TNA main event style match will, at this point of near-finish, almost always have some bullshit Jarrettesque run-in. Here it came in the form of a fake Sting, the Mountie's Stun Stick, and a false finish the valet. The confusion allowed for Jeff to recover from the sleeper and lock in one of his own. Once again, his hubris, always his failing, now mixed with that righteous babyface fury took over, and unsatisfied with a simple choke out victory, Jeff climbed up the Hardy Boyz symbol, meaning to leap off of it onto Matt one more time. The viewers were well prepped with this due to its call back nature. The first time he went up, it backfired, so wrestling conditioning told us this should work. Moreover. We'd already gotten the false finish on the Fake Willow, so Matt was thoroughly protected at this stage. There was every reason to see this as the blow off and for Jeff to win. They utilized the callback of Matt setting the scene earlier on however, and Chekhov's Gun went off, with Reby slipping him the hair spray (or well, something inflamed instead of flammable) allowing Jeff to get shoved off the top so that Matt could heelishly steal the win. Good match that fit the feud so long as you could accept the shifted scale where they started higher on the rungs, allowing for a consistent climb towards a higher peak. Jeff dropped the selling of the situation a couple of times early on in a way that came off as more than pissed off stoicism, unfortunately. This, more than any match in history, perhaps, needed total commitment, but it's likely a problem we would have had with Jeff in almost any match. Matt on the other hand played his role perfectly. In general though, it followed the traditional structure for this sort of a grudge match that went around 10 minutes in a hardcore/falls count anywhere setting, just further along the spectrum with different tools used in the same old places.

Bo Dallas is the worst case.

When in the trainwreck that was Russo's career did he comment on how his new company's matches were different than his old company's matches? Far more exciting and action packed, etc, and thus worthwhile instead of just getting rid of matches altogether?

That sounds like a fun change of pace. Now that we're past the holiday I have to play some catch up.

Parv needs to review the wrong Arn vs Barry match again.

Pro-wrestling isn't mainstream at all today. Nobody cares about it. And that's why we got 2013

Wouldn't you say that often times, when wrestling is most mainstream, the actual matches are sacrificed and diluted since they're not aimed at a more narrow, hardcore audience? All of those short Raw matches, for instance.

I always love the proto-pedigree

I work in DC at an international agency. That might do it.

I think I had more people on my facebook feed talking about soccer than either basketball or wrestling that night. It's Cleveland.

Is there any sense of match length yet?

They will never get nearly as much relative value out of her on the main roster. She matters so much more now and they need someone that matters in NXT with all the callups. It's a different crowd, one that is so in tune with her and an environment where she can be protected.

She's worth so much more as a big fish in a small pond in NXT. The act would get diluted and the purity of message blurred if she was on TV in front of apathetic crowds week in and week out. She's an actual draw in NXT. I don't think there's any value in bringing her up ever. They should lean on her more as NXT continues to become a touring brand. I don't think she'd be worth anything at all on the Main roster past month two or so, for reasons not at all her fault.

I still think the Lonely Orca nickname could be a thing.

It kills me that in the Brown match, he starts his comeback right when Boesch was about to say who the last person to use music to come out to was. It was an effective shtick for the time certainly, like 1978 New Jack. Dusty was great at conducting traffic there. Now, then, the Dusty vs Brody match. First of all, Pete and I both think this is the only Dusty vs Brody singles match we have. There's 7 mins of a FL tag with Dusty and Reed vs Brody and Studd, but this is one of the most historical things that On Demand has given us as of yet, strictly on paper. 17 minutes, 2/3 falls. I've relatively liked what I've seen of 78 heel Brody, before that first face turn. He stooges, he sells, he gives. He uses his lanky body to full effect tumbling this way or stumbling slowly down or flailing his arms about, or even positioning them up menacingly. I do think the match died a bit when he was on offense, but Dusty was quick to come back. In short, Dusty was electric with every little thing he did, and he did a few things I've never seen him do before, like the double axehandle that he fell down on or setting up for the Shattered Dreams '78 (which was the transition to Brody taking the first fall). I got such a kick out of him polishing off Brody's head before punching it and the sheer intensity that he took the second fall with was amazing to see. It's funny, but this was sort of worked like a modern CMLL Title match, with a back and forth first fall that ended with some escalation, a quick second revenge fall, and the a third fall with a lot of selling. The finish was a heat-saver but the post match had Dusty, again, being electric and I bet everyone went home happy. Unless I'm missing something, I'd call this hugely historical footage even if it wouldn't be the first match I'd suggest to people on the service. I'm very glad we have it.

What was important was the parallel to Rollins cashing in on Reigns.

I joked to Loss the other day that so long as it's pot, it's a brilliant booking strategy to make it seem like he's not the golden boy pushed by the company so that stingy fans can actually, finally, cheer him.

Taylor was just at the performance center as a guest trainer.

I do think that Brody has looked better in Houston than in other places. Some of that is having him younger. Some of it is how he had to be a certain way in Japan where we previously had most footage.

There were ~60 people in that first draft. I did a quick count on WWE.com and have ~70-75 people I'd consider active wrestlers on the roster right now, not counting anyone from NXT.