Matt D

It fits the Yuta match too. He came in, crushed the guy, got out. Went home to his family. There was no wanting to prove himself against the new generation like Punk or wanting to push himself and his opponent to their limits like Danielson. He did his job, got his paycheck, and went home. No bullshit, no mercy, just business. So what happens then when this specific version of Mox faces off against Orange Cassidy in round 2?

I honestly, truly believe that I'd like a potential Punk vs Dustin match more than the Danielson vs Dustin match (which, of course, I did like).

Dark Elevation 10/25/21 Hirsch/Mizunami vs Diamante/Kay: Fun match that sort of fell apart towards the end. Diamante is so good at leaning into her character with everything she does. It's all the more impressive since she's really a JTTS but she's just 100% committed and always on. She should have a job for as long as they're running shows. Hirsh and Mizunami is just a great Al Snow and Steve Blackman sort of pairing, if Al Snow was a powerhouse beast in the ring too. Mizunami just exudes fun. I don't know if I like Hirsch getting off her feet so much. I think I'd rather her dig out from underneath and take out limbs and just wreck people that way. The German was amazing, for instance. But at least the tandem offense was creative. Like I said, after that crazy double team flip, everything kind of fell apart but at least we got a Kevin Sullivan shout out from it. .65 Worldwide point. FTR vs Liona/Reed: This might be the most natural I've seen Tully with them. He just really felt like he was a manager and not just a guy collecting a paycheck for nostalgia's sake coming out. Maybe it's the theme? Anyway, after Wheeler looked just great on the mat, what a great showcase for Liona this turned out to be. If the roster wasn't so stacked up and down, I'd say they had money there. As it is, they might not even need him. Fans were going up for everything he was doing, and in chipping away at him, FTR looked all the better for it. I loved how they kept tagging in. At one point, Dax tagged in, got his positioning and realized that it made sense to tag Cash right back in before he did anything so they could do it (it being the double catapult which was great) together. The finish was pretty funny as Reed shows ass as the worst hot tag in history. Just a clear case of FTR realizing what they had in there with Toa and made themselves by helping to make him. Great stuff. Emi Sakura vs Reka Tehaka: Man, you could hear crickets during Emi's control stuff. The crowd just didn't want to come along for that ride. I'm not sure the hairpulling and strength counter really worked. They didn't care about the forearms either but did like wooing for the chops. The best stuff here was Reka's headbutts. Just big sweeping smashes. I like how Emi just kept shifting her tactics as one thing didn't work but it just didn't garner her any heat. The Lulu mugging after the corner splash is amazing and it's going to catch on. They need to start using still shots of that. For a brief moment, Lulu got a tiny chant. It will happen. Her bump off the robe toss at the start was maybe the fourth best part of the match. I do like that Emi has 3-4 different ways she can end things. QT vs 10: QT's bigger than I thought. At least he's managing big guys. Got to heat up 10 en route to Mox and it was a really gutsy performance from QT after his eye exploded. He's experienced enough to switch things up too. The announcers didn't pick up on it but he went right after 10's eye for revenge. It's so weird 10 does the "Ten Ten Ten" gimmick when Spears is there. Have they ever done anything with that? This basically made me want to see 10 vs Comoroto. Too many people in AEW do that double running shot into the corner, where they hit it from one angle and then the other. Maybe QT got a little too much of this but really, all anyone was looking at was the eye. Paul Wight vs Bravo/Singh/Carter: It's just fun. Him coming from the announcers' booth was a good visual. I like how they swarmed him at the start. The spear/tackle thing was a great visual. Good on Bravo for taking that. One thing about Wight vs 3 guys is that he can hit a big match-ending spot on each of them. Carter's sell for the KO punch was Punch Out-esque.

Biggest issue feels like length. Every new 50s match we get seems like 25 minutes plus. I know with the 60s French footage I’m generally watching two 30+ minute matches a week which involves some planning on my part.

Danielson vs Serpentico is one of the matchups I honestly want the most. It would be the best Saturday Morning Slam Danielson match.

Yuta should get the match to make up for the Mox squash.

I'm not watching this but Bianca beating both Sasha and Becky to take the belt over to Raw wouldn't have been the worst salvaging of her sputtering momentum. You could sort of frame it that while Becky got the drop on her at Summerslam, she actually was able to beat two of the Four Horsewomen, etc. Ah well.

Watch Danielson vs Gulak from Elimination Chamber 2020. Just saying.

"Everyone remembers the first King of the Ring, Don Muraco."

I've enjoyed Punk's quiet matches more than Danielson's loud ones. That's probably a me thing though. I look forward to Danielson wrestling all the guys Punk did.

Dark 10/19/21 Hayter vs Nieves: This wasn't quite there. I liked how Hayter was moving Nieves around the ring wherever she wanted her. That was effective but nothing looked super impactful. I wonder if she can do a hanging vertical? The clothesline was too abrupt. She should have found some way to telegraph it more and get the crowd primed for it maybe? Gunn Club vs Sheik/Alexander/Chamberlain: Is Colton's finisher the same as Dustin's new finisher? I'm not going to look for it but it seems iffy. It looked good here at least. Best bit of this was probably Austin pulling the legs from the outside early. It's very clear what Austin is but I don't really get what heel Colton is supposed to be, especially with Billy standing right there sort of being a better version of whatever it might be. Billy's punch on Sheik was great but I wanted to see that guy do more. Diamante/Nyla/Sakura vs Statlander/Rosa/Velvet: Things to like here but they were more specific moments than the overall match. I get a sense that people trained more recently are taught to look at dropdowns as a way to trip an opponent as opposed to just something you do as part of a routine. I see that in watching Velvet at least. There was almost a sense of hierarchy here as she lost the offense quickly against Emi but who knows since the match was so much noise by that point. My favorite thing about Statlander is how she works the boop in and she worked it in by trying it to Nyla and getting crushed with a suplex. Nyla sure isn't protected anymore, that's for sure. She tagged herself in and got clowned pretty quickly. Diamante fed well for everyone. That's her lot. I did like her little taste of tandem stuff with Nyla. Rosa understands what she has with the crowd and is able to milk it at times, so good on her. If these sentences are all random, disconnected thoughts, that's ok; so was the match. Also, unlike the match on Elevation, they didn't use this to hype the TBS tournament nearly as well. Jade promo: The "Very Funny" thing probably didn't work, but it was a good effort. The promo itself worked fine. I like managers. Jade obviously needs one. There's even benefit in her having her own since it makes her stand out more. The company just has a lot. Jade is not the person to put the TBS belt on this year. Archer vs Fernandez: Jake just seemed glad to be there. I would have liked to see his reaction to Archer dragging the guy out. Yeah, Archer is really fun to watch in squashes. He has that Sid/Steiners/Road Warriors vibe. This pretty quickly became the Taz/Kingston show, which was pretty distracting, let me tell you. Kingston's mini promo about how he could hurt Archer was good. Fernandez got to show some fire and he ate that forearm well off the top. This was a blur, but that's ok. I do like how Dark is constantly pushing towards the main shows. Solo vs Kazarian: I got kind of restless midway through this one and got looking up Solo and realized he was in a team with Starks right before Taz told us that. IT was funny because when he was out on the floor, I kind of had Starks vibes out of him, so I can see that. I think there's honestly room for just about everyone on the roster, but I can't tell you what Solo's doing there. He's competent, and you want guys like Kazarian and Sydal to put over talent on the bigger shows, but I don't think Kazarian is any stronger for beating Solo than he would have been beating some talented indy guy. So this was fine, sound, but there wasn't a lot of reason to care. 2.0/Garcia/Serpentico vs Dark Order: The entrance was pretty funny, especially because they set up the moment on the ramp and then paid it off in the ring with the streamers. How can you not enjoy watching Serpentico? The bit where he kept trying to give Parker a thumbs up was so good. The long beatdown on Angels didn't work. I don't know if the crowd was just exhausted and this was late in the taping cycle or he didn't get a hope spot or the Dark Order (including Colt) just weren't working the apron or what. The only one that was really getting reactions was Garcia with his off the charts intensity. 10 is one of the best hot tags in the company with his size and spots. Does Grayson always do that flip over senton to the guy leaning on the apron? That seems like a challenging spot to work into multiple matches but it worked here. The finishing stretch started awkward and then used that awkwardness for humor so good on them. Still, overall this could have worked better.

The biggest issue right now is that there's a competition on a big stage that cares about wrestlers, wrestling, and wrestling fans. It makes it blatantly obvious what sort of shitty content bread line we've all been forced into for the last twenty years.

So if I'm not mistaken we don't get the Samoans vs Soul Patrol match from March (though there's a "bonus" Garea vs Sharpe match) and we don't get Snuka vs Valentine or Maeda vs Goulet from May. We do get the Bobo Brazil match from the May show.

I thought that Emi should have thrown Lulu to Ruby last week instead of taking the loss herself. It's bound to happen sooner than later though. Dark is deceptively good at using squash matches to heat people who haven't been highlighted for a while when they have a bigger focused match on Dynamite or Rampage upcoming. There's more thought put into it than just random matches. Even the six-women tags yesterday and today seem to be to highlight the roster for the TBS tournament. Though sometimes you get random matches. I'm excited to see 2.0 and Garcia interact with Serpentico tonight in an 8 man vs the Dark Order.

Elevation 10/18/21 Dustin vs Gustavo: Got to heat up Dustin before he wrestles Danielson. There wasn't a ton to see here unfortunately. They had a nice little rope running bit at the start where Dustin shifted around him and kept him moving. Gustavo looked fine in taking Dustin's stuff. Henry name dropping Duke Droese was a thing that happened. Dustin randomly creating a new finisher and naming it after Bob Backlund the day we get our first new Bob Backlund match in forever is another. This was good but it's always a shame when you get a Dustin match where he doesn't get to work from underneath. Wardlow vs Austin: Million billion stars for Wardlow refusing to give the crowd even a second power bomb after they went nuts for the idea they were going to get one. That's the kind of thing you can do with a molten crowd. Great instincts. They still popped for his finish. The clothesline bump should have maybe looked a little better? I don't know? But yeah, great instincts by Wardlow. Santana/Ortiz vs Jaka/Maluta: Hey! I kind of liked this actually. It was a real match with tag rules and everything. Jaka and Maluta came in looking like they knew what they were doing and had some of the spots scouted and Santana/Ortiz actually had to work at it, which made them look better in toughing it out for victory. They were still dominant. They were never really at risk. It still felt like a match. No issues with this one. Mizunami/Velvet/King vs Sakura/Nyla/Diamante: Tons to like here. This was my first look at Ryo and she just had really great reactions to everything and solid shots. You could sense the crowd was kind of for Diamante though so maybe that wasn't the best early match up. King and Velvet worked very well together. I wouldn't mind seeing more of that. I liked Velvet eating everyone's offense for the FIP and how both of her bits of hope were based on her opponents knocking her partners off the apron. That Spanish Fly looked like she almost broke herself in half though. Lulu's reactions after Emi hits the cross body in the corner are always worth looking out for, as was Nyla all but pulling her in to celebrate after the match was over. Ryo looked like a world beater vs Nyla to the point where they had to save her from a pinfall after a suplex. Very best moment of the match was Emi mugging to the camera as she was holding Velvet's leg on the outside on the finish. That was amazing. This could have used another minute or two but obviously that extra Buy-In hour wasn't part of the original plan.

Is there a sense of what wasn't out there before from the May card?

So I’m sorry about this, but I want Cody to be the guy to lose it on Punk. I’ve sat on that for a few days but it works on a bunch of levels.

Yeah, but from a kayfabe perspective. It’s not the US title as the champ isn’t the #1 contender. He doesn’t rank at all.

I mean, look, what even is the TNT title?

Punk is there to have a good time and test the waters. He wanted to main event Wrestlemania so badly that he almost died. Right now he’s having fun. Eventually something has to give but not for a few more months. Zero problems with it. It completely fits who he is and where he is.

Having fun wrestling 23 year olds to feel young again. His last mid-life crisis had him get beat up in MMA. This is healthier.

This is presumably what AAA wanted? But I mean AAA does weird stuff like this that won't move the needle for their core crowd all the time, right?

At least crowd's up for it? Granted, the match got to have actual heat, so it makes sense they're up for the comeback.

I like Fun Punk. I just want to see someone bloody him up a bit. If you really look in your heart, you’ll realize you do too.

Posted in the wrong thread but.. By the way, I'm ultimately in agreement that the Danielson match worked because it was Suzuki and because it was character driven. If he came out and had a match just like this with another opponent tomorrow (even a similar one), I'd be nonplussed, but within the confines of the States at least, Suzuki is singular and unique and exceptional, and this is exactly the match he'd have with him. Thankfully, in this case it was about the wrestler driving the style and not the style driving the wrestler. As something singular and unique, it WAS exceptional. But now I'm ready for him to have a completely different match with Fish.