rzombie1988

Anyone got a link? Or did you guys torrent/Stardom World this?

YES to Dunne/Bate. While I would have liked to have seen the shoulder/arm factor more into it a bit since it was injured, they did play up to it well. The crowd was hot and the match had built it meaning, so it was pretty much guaranteed to be something good.

Big YES to Shibata/Goto 1.4: I reviewed it here with pics/gifs: http://prowresblog.blogspot.com/2017/01/new-japan-pro-wrestling-142017-never.html I wrote: Hirooki Goto beat Katsuyori Shibata with the GTR. Awesome match. This was all brawling all the time and I loved it. A real man's man battle here with tons of haymakers. Everything Shibata did looked good. He even made corner stomps look legit, which almost every wrestler I've seen has been unable to do. Goto and Shibata match up so well together and this was another instance. They took it to the next level here with some of their exchanges and everything looked like it hurt. They did do a few no sells on suplexes which I hated, but overall I can forgive it for the strong work in other area's. Awesome pro wrestling and a definite must see match. Goto got the big win here and maybe NJPW can figure out how to get him in the main event in 2017. Rating:****1/2

Agreed, Devlin legitimately looks like a 5 year old with a beard. Legit hope I never see him again. I have no idea how they make a weekly show out of this group. That's going to be some slim pickings.

Couldn't watch all of it but the final looked pretty good.

Agreed

What chance has he gotten to really do anything else but have good matches though? He never gets promo time or vignettes. I think he's okay on the mic.

I mean I like Dunne and Wolfgang, but are these guys really going to be able to carry a TV show? That's kind of asking a lot.

We'll see when it happens. Every year there are rumors that they are going to Netflix.

i'm curious, what caused the $100+ increase when reviewing the same stuff? If anything, streams have cut down on VOD/DVD purchases [Mad Dog's point above]. Cable is already quite expensive, but I think it's clear every promotion is going to be doing VOD soon. Some are just going to take longer than others. It's going to add up unless they start consolidating. I don't pay that now, but I can see it getting near that point.

Really didn't like it, but I couldn't watch it or comment on it in full due to work: http://prowresblog.blogspot.com/2017/01/wwe-uk-championship-tournament-results.htmlrodge Wolfgang, Burch, Dunne and Bate were the stars of the show. I don't think any of those guys are good enough to carry a show though. A lot of those guys were really not good though personality or in-ring wise and were quite bland. Everything felt really rushed too which hurt things. Reddit loved it though which doesn't surprise me. I'm really not sure if we saw one true submission hold worked during the whole show...

I think Cesaro could have been a main eventer. He was one of the most over faces on the indies with the "HEY" stuff, he has the height and is one of the best wrestlers on the planet. Would things have really been that different if he had taken Sheamus' spot? He's damaged though now and even though I was his biggest fan, I gave up all hope. I think anyone could be a superstar if WWE booked them correctly and put enough energy behind them though.

I think it would be a great time right now for a Pro Wrestling This Week type of show to come out. I'm really surprised one of the ESPN's or Fox Sports' haven't thought of giving it a try. It would benefit everyone and the overhead really wouldn't be that much. And with some of their shows only doing 100,000 viewers anyway, I think a type of show like this could hold its grown for 30 minutes a week.

I do think it is a great time for availability for hardcore fans in some ways but bad in others. Streaming, uploading and torrent sites were completely nuked by DMCA's. Youtube and Dailymotion used to have a ton of stuff but a lot of it is gone. Tape trading has also started to die off. But on the legal end, there's more access than ever before, if you can afford it. I definitely think companies are going to have to group together to really succeed, and even then, I don't know.

I used to review everything for my blog, and even with a $100+ cable bill a month, it didn't cut the mustard. To review the same stuff I used to review, I could easily see a near $200/month bill if I count cable plus various wrestling streaming services. Right now, these are some of the companies with streaming services: - WWE - ROH - NJPW - Stardom - DDT(Upcoming) - FlowSlam - IIRC Chikara has one - Plus a whole host other companies. While I really like the idea that you can buy or stream any show at any time, I think the various companies are asking a lot for what they give. $10/month for a show or two isn't that much, but on top of everything else, it is. And with recurring subscriptions, that's quite a bit to catch up on. The economy is also really rough right now. I know some software developers and people at higher levels are making big bucks, but the average joe isn't. Most people I know are working 2-3 jobs and are working more than anyone else, so they don't even have time to watch TV. I truthfully don't see how average people with kids are surviving right now. The one thing I really don't like about the VOD/Monthly Subscription model is that it makes it very unlikely that anyone not looking for it will find it. No casual fan is just going to buy this stuff unless its the WWE network. Having TV helps a lot, but the promotions without TV aren't going to see huge success in my opinion. I think the best bet for any company not named WWE is to try to find partners to work with to bundle in a deal, but one of them is going to have to have TV or they might as well forget it. Or if the various companies could convince WWE to take them on for an additional price, which the WWE has considered doing. What do you guys think?

YES - BJW 1/2/17 - Twin Towers vs Strong BJ Match link is here: https://rutube.ru/video/b75ddb98345691e1e8f1415d4031f3ec/?pl_id=1067514&pl_type=user Review with pics/gifs here: http://prowresblog.blogspot.com/2017/01/big-japan-pro-wrestling-122017-twin.html My thoughts: MOTY. Fricking awesome real mans pro wrestling right there. 4 big dudes just clubbering the hell out of each other for 20+ mins. This was stiff, this was realistic and I just wish all wrestling could be like this. They started it off slow, doing lesser moves and keeping it simple with strikes then opened the match up more and more with suplexes and big lariats and big hits until the finish where Sekimoto bled hardway after a stiff headbutt and delayed german'd Ishikawa. The crowd was hot all throughout and this was fricking great. Big highlights here was the Sekimoto hardway juice, Sekimoto hitting a deadlift vertical suplex on Sato, Sekimoto's/Okabayashi's crazy facials and just piles of potato strikes.

I reviewed CWF Mid-Atlantic #86 here: http://prowresblog.blogspot.com/2017/01/cwf-mid-atlantic-worldwide-ep-86-142017.html Overall thoughts: The show was fun overall. The matches were a bit too quick but on the other hand didn't have enough time to be bad or get stale. Maybe that's the key? The crowd was pretty hot all show and the main event was a solid match. You don't really need to see anything but the main here but in all it was a fun hour of pro wrestling with a hot crowd, people who mostly look like pro wrestlers and solid commentary. Some shots from the show:

Checking it out now. Dirty Daddy is really bad.

Mine are: No rating - I'm either totally unsure of what to give it, the match got stopped or I worry that because my opinion was so drastically different from everyone else, it's probably better I don't rate it. -5 stars to Dud: Worst of the worst. Will get rated just for how lousy it was. 1-2 stars: Pretty much just stars for stars sake. These matches weren't good and a lot of the time I won't even bother rating them because they aren't worth my time. They are bad but usually still forgettable enough that it's not worth ranting over. 3 stars - Your average good match. Nothing too fancy about it, nothing you are really going to miss if you don't see it. It has its misses and hits. It is also the territory for a lot of throwaway or possibly short matches that were decent but weren't going to be anything more for various reasons. A lot of the time, this rating wasn't because of anything the wrestlers did, it was the time of the match or the booking of it. 4 stars - Somewhat of an epic match that isn't going to be a MOTY, but is a lower contender for MOTYC. These were strong matches that had some issues that prevented them from getting higher ratings. You'll remember these matches and they are clearly above the normal good match. The key word to me is being memorable, and 4 star matches should start to be. The only promotion that doesn't count towards this is AJPW because they had so many matches of almost the same style that were top quality and they can run together at times. 4.5-4.7 stars - Almost a perfect match. Usually ends up having a botch, bad finish or a bad segment that drove the match off a little bit. Might also not be making it to 5 stars for just not having that next level moment. 5 stars - This can have a couple of meanings. It can be a perfect match - Like a Kawada/Misawa 6/3/94 that has no real holes in it whatsoever and is able to have an exciting beginning/middle/end. It can be a match that managed to nail the basics and still expand like Takada/Hashimoto or Wargames 1991. Even something like Floyd Mayweather vs The Big Show, where they nailed the various storylines like wrestler vs boxer and David vs Goliath plus added the pro-wrestling campiness. It can also be a match that was able to go "to the next level" as I usually call it or is able to go past usual pro-wrestling schtick. Ishii vs Shibata from 2013 was like this. They took their strike flurry to the next level and then kept it up for the remainder of the match with unmatched intensity and stiffness.

Seems like he has some issues backstage. We know he doesn't really get along that great with Tanahashi/Nakamura. NJPW seems reluctant to put any real money or trust behind him and they've skipped multiple obvious big matchups. Seems to me to be the reason why he fools around with Goto other lesser NJPW names when he's clearly one of the best in the promotion. Some people have said they are just "saving his big matches for later", but they waited so long that matches like Shibata/Nakamura or Shibata/Ibushi can't even happen now.

Wasn't that the one I just reviewed above? Yeah but I read it as April 8th instead of August 4th. Month first man

You have to see Shibata's G1 match with Ishii from 8/4/13. It was tied for my MOTY.

Missed this discussion during its peak but Baba was still involved in 4 star matches at the age of 57 against people like Kobashi, Misawa and Hansen during the 90's RWTL's. Even being broken down he was still good. He was a simple, safe and great worker.

Takada vs Hashimoto

Heat evolves, just like everything else in wrestling. People have phones and tablets now - even in the biggest of big spots, some of them are going to be filming it, rather than living in it. I also just believe that people react differently. People evolve. It's been decreasing steadily since the mid 90's. Just have to watch the matches to see that Yeah, it's really hard to argue against that.