Matt D

Alexa is right there with her Claw and awesome over the top reactions to everything. Carmella too. And Athena in the wings.

Probably still a better draw than Brock?

There's a lot of value in an honest surprise for people who can't get surprised easily. Also, nostalgia, and freakshow dives, and stakes. Which they make meaningless all the time.

I can't even imagine how much I miss by being terrible at Spanish.

You can watch a year's worth of Casas matches and never see him do that on the mat too. Some of the ways he reacted to Hechicero's twisty turny-submissions, both in getting out and selling, and trying to struggle against elements of them was as good, logical, and novel as anyone I've ever seen against Hech.

I'm more inclined towards dull matwork than others. That said, the most fascinating part of the match is constrained Brody. I thought it was effective but a little dull, yeah. Can't wait for the long form Von Erichs stuff. I have my expectations raised by the Halcon/Race and Tully/Mil angles. Who was booking Houston in 78-79? Hart?

I'm going to have to dodge and dive and brave angering my wife on Mother's Day to try to see it today because I can't wait.

Most of the complaints I hear are at live events. LIke tonight for example. NXT ran two shows, one in the midwest and the other in Orlando. All the big time "tv stars" were in the midwest and the only guys people in Orlando knew were the Revival, The Drifter and Nia Jax. Granted the Vaudevillans made a surprise appearance but the Florida shows aren't drawing like they use to. They need to build more stars on TV to help out with these split shows and not just bring in indie guys that only work the out of state shows. What did they draw at peak and what are they drawing now?

Not a lot to say about Johnson vs Gino. It was a great coming out party for early heel Gino and I bet Boesch was super proud of him. Brody vs Valentine (Buddy Roberts) was extremely interesting. The best way I can explain it would be like a lucha title match Brody (or to a lesser extent a NWA title match), in that he did a lot things on the level and there was more wrestling, even if it was more headlocks than anything else. It's a testament to Roberts how different he is as Dale Valentine but he really is a poor man's Johnny/Greg. Here, though, I think he was in a position to show a little more. This is a Brody I've rarely seen and I think he wrestled the match extremely appropriately, with a lot of the positives without many of the negatives you usually get from him. If we had a whole career of this guy acting this way, I could see him as more people's favorite. Let me put it this way, there's a moment early in the headlock sequence where it's pretty obvious Valentine is calling spots with him. The level of cooperation was there. They still had their limitations, both of them, but it was a lot better than I was expecting coming in and it frankly has me optimistic for other 78 Brody matches we've yet to get but might like the Wahoo, Dusty, and Bockwinkel ones (And even some more of the Rocky Johnson ones).

Sandow was the third most over guy at the Rumble last year, after Brock and Bryan. It wasn't even close.

I can't get enough of the pitch punch finish.

It also got him away from opponents with bad habits and overbooked matches so that he'd wrestle a broad range of opponents in a lot of different places without any sort of house style. That helped, I think. The difference between a lot of great performances and less than great matches and great performances that could lead to great matches?

Does anyone know why Toscano isn't a CMLL lifer? That's something I've always been curious about.

I wanted to learn more about the Mighty Atlas the other day, so I did a search and found this. https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1499&dat=19510914&id=disaAAAAIBAJ&sjid=riMEAAAAIBAJ&pg=4626%2C6118466&hl=en That made me wonder how much wrestling was covered in the Journal and I browsed a bit and found this as well: https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=HulQAAAAIBAJ&sjid=HiQEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6006%2C2080846 I don't have time to dig too much but that one was really timely for me as I'd just read about Verne in Capitol Revolution. I'm not sure how many other newspapers from the territory days are online but there could be a lot of interesting articles out there even just from the Journal over the years.

(Also, the best match on the Summerslam 92 card is definitely Beverly Brothers vs Natural Disasters. Super Underrated match. I haven't said that for a while, so I'm saying it again).

Now that we're past the live streaming for the Friday-Thursday period, let me steal some upcoming lineups from cubsfan: So the Friday Clarosports show is: That's a pretty fun card actually. Panthers vs Fujin/Raijin would be fun, but more fun if Skandalo wasn't there to hit people in the groin a lot (and not in the great Fuerza way). Who's going to be matched up against Porky in the tercera? Vangellys? I kind of want to see that regardless. I'm higher than anyone else in the world on Bucanero in general, but he can go in a lightning match against someone like Titan. Second to top has more Cometa vs Cavernario and Casas to boot. And then the main has a lot of good wrestlers and Mascara, so there should be a fun beatdown in there at least. Next Monday's show live on youtube: No follow up to Cavernario/Terrible, which makes me sad. No Toro Bill Jr./Rey Apocolipsis either. I thought Dalys and Estrellita did pretty well in the lightning match, so we'll see how they do for a title match. I love the rudos trio of Virus, Warrior Steel, and Yago already. Shocker (finally back) is a very weird fit in that main event, but I really like Marco/Maximo/Casas as a team too. And Tuesday live on youtube: My initial takeaway is that the show the same night in Guadalajara has Rush vs Terrible and a BP, Titan, Cometa vs Cavernario, Puma, Tiger match, so we're getting screwed here, but it has the better looking Panthers vs Fujin/Raijin match, a decent enough lightning match, and Hechicero (YMMV on Porky vs Kraneo, of course) so it's not all bad. Nothing jumps out like last night's title match though. That's for sure.

I don't think babyface Perfect in 93 was all that much based around the big bumping. He was even able to tap into some of the AWA-era offense in the Doink series.

Someone's posted a ton of 3PW in the last day. I won't link to the whole show but this is out there, currently, as part of the "A Night for the Flyboy" show. Keep that in mind. This was a Ted Petty tribute show, immediately following Jasmin St. Claire turning on Blue Meanie and going with Tod Gordon and preceding Saby vs Pitbull Gary Wolfe. So you can imagine the sort of crowd here. The match itself was very cool for what it was. Hennig was bloated, absolutely, as this was just a few months before his death, but it fit the way he was working, and was very appropriate for this match. Past a couple of big bumps (a 360 off a punch and one over the top onto the announcer's table) and the neck flip, he was mainly bruising. It was almost like he was slowly turning into his father and I feel like we were robbed from years of cool indy Curt "the Axe" Hennig senior tour matches. Lawler, on the other hand, wrestled this as if it was his first big babyface appearance in the Northeast in twenty years (which I'm sure wasn't the case). He came out to the theme from Rocky but this could have been 1981 with him coming out to Star Wars after recovering from the leg injury. There was that same serious, no-nonsense vibe to him, playing off Hennig's cocky, grumpy heel performance. They never really got out of second gear, but they never had to, able to achieve everything they set out to do by mainly brawling and working a TV style main event match. I had a lot of fun watching it. It provided some level of closure with Hennig too. After jawing with the crowd post-match, when he's almost back to the end of the ramp, he raises his hands to let some of the rising applause sink in. That's as good as a farewell moment we'll get for him.

That's the big question, isn't it.

Lightning matches aren't my favorite thing in the world either, certainly. I have less of a problem with the hierarchy of what will finish a match, though, just in general. You can rationalize it a lot of ways, but I generally see lucha as symbolic and what matters more in any moment is whether or not a trios team, for instance, has the momentum, the mandate of heaven, really. Pretty much anything can finish a lightning match at any time and we're lucky in a lot of ways that mostly anything could end mostly any fall in a title match. The doubt is at least there.

Regal's half nelson suplex is great.

That's the biggest intersect with NXT in my mind. Wins GENERALLY matter. Losses generally matter. Titles matter. Feuds transition from one to the next. Things are remembered from week to week and even season to season so far. Characters develop. It's fundamental stuff, basic stuff, but it's been so rare in the US scene since, what, the early 90s? It stands out.

I'm generally more forgiving with lightning matches, I'll admit. It's an expectation thing. Here's last night's show. I didn't catch most of it so I can't speak to the quality of most of the card, but I did see the end and the main event is well worth watching. It starts at 1:51:45 or so.

Probably in 2036