KB8

Maaaan early Yamada was so good. It's wild how easily we (or, quite simply, I) forget that. He was mostly here to take a shit-kicking and bring some fire when given the rare chance to and my goodness did he take a shit-kicking and bring some fire when given the rare chance to. Takada was a wrecking ball and wellied him with kicks while Kido was utterly determined to rip the wee fella's arm off with a kimura. Like, Kido went back to this kimura about seven times. He was relentless with it. Inoki kind of gobbled up Takada and Kido when he was in there, although I must admit it led to some amazing moments, one of which being him juuuust about catching a Takada spin kick and ripping him into a leglock. When Takada landed one on him properly, like when he came in and smashed Inoki in the ribs while he was grappling with Kido, it felt huge, but those moments were few and far between. Inoki would set up the field for Yamada who'd come in red hot, but it wouldn't last and inevitably he found himself getting wasted in short order, like when he came flying off the top and Takada caught him with a kick. The huge German suplex at the end was spectacular, enough so that Inoki offered a handshake to the UWF guys. Real recognise real.

Well I'll be. A fairly decent amount of Tenryu v Mutoh matches have happened over the years, six of them from 1999-2002 alone, but this is the first one that's really jumped off the page as being properly awesome (the Tenryu/Muta match from 1996 is tremendous, but that's a whole different sort of spectacle). I thought the build and implementation of strategy was on par with some of your 90s All Japan classics, albeit on a much smaller and less ambitious scale. On the other hand this didn't have the excess of those and if you're like me then 19 minutes of this is going to be more appealing to you than 43 minutes of that, for as brilliant as THAT could often be. They start with some basic matwork, nothing too different from how they've started a few of their matches together, then about four minutes in Tenryu sets us on our merry way. I cannot for the life of me remember Tenryu doing a Shining Wizard before, but this was amazing and his impression of Mutoh's little pose after it was maybe even better. Mutoh is PEEVED and immediately has to leave the ring to compose himself and perhaps we wonder if he maybe should've sold his own signature move for longer than sex seconds there, though I suppose rage will light a fire under us all and with it comes an imperviousness that we can't quite comprehend probably. The last couple Tenryu/Mutoh matches I watched had Mutoh predominantly going after the leg. I get it because it plays into the Shining Wizard and it makes sense, and it was fine, but there's probably always going to be a ceiling on how much I'll enjoy Mutoh working a leg. This time he changes tack and instead of going after the leg, he focuses on the arm. But also the leg a wee bit and we'll get to that in a second. The transition into the arm work was spectacular, as he first wipes Tenryu out with a plancha, then hits a Shining Wizard that smashes the back off Tenryu's head off the guardrail, and follows those up with a cross armbreaker on the floor that actually has Tenryu tapping out. We get some foreshadowing of the leg coming into play after the Shining Wizard, as Mutoh lands on Tenryu's leg and it gets bent super awkwardly, and Tenryu clutches at it as if it's been hurt. Mutoh's offence is mostly low dropkicks to the shoulder while Tenryu struggles to his feet, so not really much different to his usual low dropkicks to the knee in overall execution. There are times as well though where he'll actually get Tenryu to the mat by using the dragon screw, so it's a bit of a two-pronged attack and ultimately plays to him setting up the Shining Wizard again if he can't make Tenryu submit. Tenryu's selling was great the whole way and I love that most of his offence in return was brutal chops and blatant face-punching. Things shift his way a bit when Mutoh incorporates a THIRD strategy like some sort of Pep Guardiola, where he basically uses the Shining Wizard to set up the moonsault as another alternative to the arm work. And like the actual Pep Guardiola he maybe shouldn't have overthought everything on the big occasion because Tenryu will not be hit with that fucking moonsault. He rolls out the way of the first one and Mutoh lands hard on his already-decimated knee, so obviously that slows him down while giving Tenryu a target to aim for in times of trouble. Tenryu gritting his teeth and finally unleashing the lariats was done about as well as you could want, a bit like your classic "this'll hurt me but it'll hurt you more" Kobashi/Hashimoto/Misawa performances after someone works over the arm for a while. Mutoh counters the first brainbuster by kneeing Tenryu in the head in mid-air and I think he even sold the knee after it as well, which obviously ruled. Then Tenryu gets knees up on Mutoh's third moonsault attempt, hoists him up for another brainbuster, this time absorbs Mutoh's knee strike, and crumples him in a way where you know he's not getting up again. This was really great. They easily could've gone another few minutes and sprinkled in some more nearfalls, but even for a relatively short finishing run I thought they built big drama and did so with only a handful of bombs, really because the timing and pacing was so strong. And the story of Mutoh's strategies almost turning himself in circles was really cool. He had Tenryu reeling and he overreached, maybe because Tenryu is who Tenryu is, but either way the moonsault was his own undoing in the end. And Tenryu will punish you as emphatically as anybody ever could. Just an excellent match.

I'm watching this in a pub in Cardiff and I've clocked that it's about eight hours long. I'm way the fuck too old to be watching anything for that amount of time so when there are memes all over twitter of an astonishingly handsome Scottish gentleman asleep on a bar somewhere while Moxley stabs someone with a fork then at least you know who's responsible for it. Seriously though there are like 15 matches on this bastard.

I wasn't sure how it would play on TV, but I was in the stadium last night and it was a total blast of a show and the main event was fucking biblical. We lived and died with Drew Mac, especially the Good Scottish Blokes, of which we were plentiful. Everyone was 100% behind Drew winning and at least two nearfalls blew the roof off. Part of me doesn't want to re-watch the match as it was such an amazing live experience and I kind of want to leave it at that, but I probably will. It was like a proper sport contest feel for the last 5 minutes or so, just real emotion with people fully bought in. If he won that thing there would've been genuine grown adult tears all over the shop. Aw fuck man they should've pulled the trigger. I wouldn't have had my shirt off quick enough, let me tell you.

The inter-promotional wrestling brings us the goods once again. This was mostly about the Aja/Eagle pairing for me. There was a wee bit of ill will there from the last tag they were on opposite sides of, so it meant we got plenty of meaty shots and parts where they'd just Vader-style run into each other. I couldn't tell you if I'd seen one Leo Kitamura match before this but she was a pretty great whipping girl on the night. She was kitted out like Kyoko with the face paint and tassels, and I'm not sure if she did that as a deliberate wind-up but she got her clock well cleaned for it. You could make a good case she was the star of this with her scrappiness and sympathy-garnering. Aja was thoroughly dismissive of her and at points it looked like she maybe even felt bad about walloping the poor girl. She'd take her down after Kitamura threw some feeble slaps, but then instead of pounding her head into the mat like she would against many others, she just tagged out and let Kyoko deal with it. Aja was also really fun taking whatever offence Kitamura could muster, the best being her quick springboard elbow out the corner where she went full bodyweight into Aja's chest, bounced off her like a crash test dummy, yet stunned her briefly enough so Kitamura could make the tag. An extended heat segment would've really pushed it over the top, but what we did get was the sort of thing you want and by the end Kitamura looked like she was struggling to even stay upright. I don't have much to say about Kyoko. I've largely avoided her going through this stuff unless she's opposite someone I really like and I came out of this thinking that if I was going to watch someone dressed in Kyoko Inoue garb I'd rather it was Leo Kitamura.

Stylistically I feel like I should've enjoyed this more than I did. It's not that I actively DIDN'T enjoy it, I just wasn't really engaged and even when they were doing things I'd usually be into I was sort of drifting in and out. The early parts were built around grappling and it was some of the more rugged grappling you'll see from this period of AJW, or even joshi in general. They slowed the pace down and kept it grounded, rarely taking it back to the feet so they could run the ropes or trade dropkicks and snapmares. I didn't find it all that compelling, but if it had gone the more back-and-forth route then I'd have found it even less compelling so...there's some valuable information for you all to do with as you wish. Minami has a great tilt-a-whirl backbreaker if you would like some more valuable information. Eventually Minami goes after Hokuto's leg and they started to win me over, even if some of what she did looked a little goofy. The part where she laid Hokuto's leg out flat and climbed the turnbuckles to hit a splash on it was a neat enough idea, but the setup was weird so Hokuto had to lie there and watch it happen rather than just, like, move out the way. Then again pro wrestling is stupid as fuck so maybe it's a hollow complaint. I liked how Hokuto would slow things all the way down to a crawl just to sell the damage, at one point hobbling around on the floor as the ref' put the count on, not getting back in the ring until that split second before 20. When she fought back and mounted some proper offence she kept drawing attention to the leg, like when she'd hit some suplexes but wouldn't be able to hold the bridge attempts. The selling was just right; understated enough that you bought her thinking the next time she tried it she'd pull it off, not going overboard as if she'd been shot in the calf leaving you questioning the wisdom of returning to that well. Then again pro wrestling is stupid as fuck so maybe that would've been another hollow complaint. Really liked the finish, which strangely reminded me of the finish to Warrior/Savage from that year's Wrestlemania. Maybe it was the decisiveness of it, the way it was emphatic while still sort of catching me by surprise. Like Warrior hitting the repeated shoulder tackles, Hokuto hit three missile dropkicks and a cannonball senton, all from different corners of the ring. Like Savage after those tackles, Minami was pretty much done. Hokuto put the exclamation point on it with the head drop while Warrior never needed to, but even still there was a brief moment of "wait, they're not getting back up here, are they?" And they do not get back up. Maybe if Hokuto had pinned Minami with one foot on the chest and walked away with a sleeveless tie dye jacket that had both of their faces on it this would've also been eleven stars. But then if my granny had wheels she would've been a bike. Alas.

Fucking hell is this an amazing bit of pro wrestling. The last time I watched it was over a decade ago, back on the DVDVR All Japan set. I had it as the 7th best All Japan match of the 80s then and honestly, that feels about 5 spots too low. Long story short, they worked one of my favourite match types in all of wrestling. That match type being the one that has you going from "these guys have no shot at actually winning this thing, do they?" at the beginning to "wait a second here, do they ACTUALLY have a shot at winning this thing?!" An awesome riff on that match type is one featuring a broken down semi- or fully-retired wrestler. Lawler/Miz from 2011 and Flair/Edge from 2006 are obvious WWE examples, where by the end of the match the audience is drawn in completely and they have you believing the old fella might just pull it out the bag. And this is the best version of that match ever, with two guys at their absolute peaks as wrecking ball bastards against two guys who look like they struggle to even exist, where general movements inside a wrestling ring look taxing beyond reason, where that crowd is just living and dying on every single thing those old guys do. I thought everyone in this was legit incredible. Every performance, start to finish. If Baba only had one good night left in him then he was going down emptying the clip and this might be the best example of his chops working on a level that very few strikes in history ever have. I don't care if they look a bit ropey, a thousand wrestlers today throw chops that sound like a shotgun blast - and probably hurt like one too - but none of them elicit the crowd reaction of Baba palming Tenryu in the head here. The Tenryu/Baba stuff works even better within the context of Tenryu's 1989. They matched up a few times throughout that year in six-mans and regular tags, and Tenryu showed nothing towards Baba but disrespect at best and contempt at worst. He didn't care for Baba's legacy and he showed it any chance he could, yet Baba would almost never bite, would never stoop to Tenryu's level no matter how far he was pushed. The tope at the beginning here is one of the best "you fucking WILL acknowledge me" moments ever, paying off about a year's worth of build. Obviously Baba's selling on the floor and then on the apron was amazing, rolling around like he's taken a gut shot from a cannon, milking every second of being incapacitated, selling that tope as he paces up and down the apron waiting for the tag. You knew the place would erupt when he got that tag, IF he got that tag, but Rusher got to take centre stage for a while first. For a guy at this point who can really only headbutt folk and eat chops you can't ask for much more. There were times where he was too broken down to actually move out the way of something, so instead he just braced himself as much as possible, grimaced and took whatever shot was thrown at him, sometimes defiant, sometimes too beaten to know where the shot had even come from. I love how the headbutts worked for a while until Hansen and Tenryu tried to take that head and just break it open like a coconut. The table shots looked brutal. The initial one even SOUNDED disgusting, then Tenryu came over while Rusher was sprawled on the floor and started ramming the table into his face. The beating Tenryu and Hansen laid on him mostly consisted of kicking and punching him in his cut open forehead and it would be hard to make a punch-kick heat segment on a 50-year old man any more compelling than this. They swarmed him, cut him off emphatically, wound up smeared in blood and none of it was their own, and after a while you knew all Rusher was trying to do was survive on the off chance Baba could halfway recover. There was an unreal bit in the middle of the beatdown where he blocked a Tenryu chop, grabbed him by the hair to throw another one of those headbutts that served him to well early, but this time Tenryu blocked it and walloped him with an overhand to the neck. It was a little thing but it was an amazing touch, one that reinforced how absolutely fucked the old man was. Then Tenryu tries to lariat him in the corner and Rusher just lowers his head and Tenryu runs face-first into it like a fucking maniac. Which was the perfect setup to the hot tag, but also highlighted a broader point of Tenryu being absolutely world class at eating strikes in this match. He made every headbutt, chop and big boot look like death, largely because he had no compunction about leaning ALL the way into them. There were four moments where he could've lost teeth because he was determined not to telegraph that he was about to be hit, so when Baba brought the foot up to counter the lariat Tenryu was taking that thing square in the face at fifty miles an hour (and the subsequent bump off it was indescribable). Every time Baba caught him with a surprise shot it actually felt like a surprise. Tenryu never slowed down before running into it, never changed the setup to whatever he was theoretically intending to do before Baba struck him, so those moments were some of the most immersive in the entire match. Like the beatdown on Rusher, Tenryu and Hansen working Baba's ribs was probably more compelling than it had any right to be. Partly it was down to Baba's selling but more than that it was because Tenryu and Hansen went full crowbar and tried to punt him up and down the place. The bit where they were taking turns dropping elbows on his sternum was almost disturbing. Baba stumbles into his own corner at several points after managing to survive onslaughts only to find his partner still sidelined, so the longer he needs to go it alone the less you believe he has a chance. Then Rusher goes down in a blaze of glory. In fact you can't even call it that, because blaze of glory makes it sound heroic, like he jumped on the proverbial grenade or took someone down with him, when in reality he did neither and had no say in the matter. The moment he trips Hansen from the floor makes you think he might've just bought Baba enough time, especially considering Baba had just eaten a double powerbomb (which was a great little piece of booking as it meant Baba didn't need to kick out of a death move immediately). When Rusher manages to drag himself back onto the apron you wonder if the crazy fuck might actually get back in the match. Hansen beheading him with the lariat before he's even upright was such an emphatic cut-off. You want your heroes to succeed, to pull it out even in the bleakest of situations, but you know what? Sometimes what you want and what the world gives you are at odds and you could practically feel the lariat rip the heart out that crowd. Baba ducking the next lariat and reversing the powerbomb was biblical, but in the end there was no chance. Even still, the struggle on Tenryu's face as he hoisted the big man up pretty well told the story. What a match. Selling, timing, NARRATIVE~, offence, heat, workrate, hope spots, cut-offs, whatever the fuck else -- it ticked all the boxes. One of the best of the decade.

Sort of nuts that it's been eleven years since I last watched this. It's still probably the best Hollywood Blonds match. The foreign object shtick at the beginning rules. Pillman takes a roll of coins out his trunks and cackles like some SHENANIGANS are afoot, then when Bagwell tells the ref' to check him he hides it back in the trunks but refuses to open his closed fist. When he finally does and proves there's nothing in his hand he bursts out laughing like this is the funniest shit in the world. He then hides it in the kneepad before passing it to Austin, so when the ref' checks the kneepad there's nothing there and Pillman is beside himself at how amusing this is. It was very Memphis and I'm not even annoyed that it never had any actual payoff to speak of (we never see it again after the opening bit). Bagwell and Scorp both take a turn playing face in peril and this crowd are just molten hot for these guys. It's always a hoot when the WCW studio crowds would chant "Whoomp, there it is" for Marcus Bagwell and they're absolutely losing it for him doing the Blonds' roll camera bit in Austin's face. Then Austin about yanks his head off with the most brutal towel clothesline you'll ever see, which was a fairly amazing transition spot. Scorpio's heat segment is even better than Bagwell's and I always love how much height he'll get on simple moves. Or not even moves as such, just how he'll leap into the air before hitting the mat as Pillman steps over him hitting the ropes. He's graceful in a way not many guys of the era were. There were a bunch of really fun Blonds moments during the beatdowns as well, my favourite being the assisted abdominal stretch, or maybe Austin's little dance mocking Scorpio. The more I go back and watch Austin the more awesome he comes across. I guess most people think of him as a brawler as that was how he worked during the supernova years, but to me brawling Austin was so good because of the energy and the character work. As an actual punch-kick brawler I don't think he ever really had good punches. His execution on regular wrestling moves and his bumping ability was always pretty outstanding though, and you get to see more of that pre-neck injury. Even a simple vertical suplex bump here looked great. He's a guy who's rocketed back up my favourites list over the last few years and maybe I'll do that full 2001 re-watch some day. Anyhow, this was great and one of the best WCW tags of the decade.

I guess Brody had better boots, if only by virtue of Necro not even bothering with such frivolousness in the first place.

I was reading this thread and got stuuuuupid hyped at the idea of Fit Finlay wrestling on TV again and then I realised you were all talking about his son (whom I've never seen so this isn't really a shot at the laddie himself) and I got bummed out and then I got to the Danielson stuff and got bummed out even more.

I'll echo the "Fire me! I'm already fired!" Flair vibes from the MJF promo, although the heel who was possibly Ultimate Warrior style holding up the company for money doing it on the boss of said company who's very well liked because he's basically an internet wrestling nerd in line with the promotion's primary fan base is sort of weird and ass backwards but then it's 2022 and everything's all meta and shades of gray and he swore a bunch so 12-year-old me would've dug it. Prolly. I actually like him more as an in-ring guy than a promo guy but he at least said everything with his fucking chest and, you know, hopefully wherever they go from here doesn't suck. Hopefully Jericho saw that bald spot of his and figured the best course of action is to go full 1980 Buddy Rose with the head-shaving and mask/wig combo for a while.

You know, I watched their mano a mano from the end of September '95 the other night and figured there had to be a trios leading into it where they tried to get at each other. So I guess that'll be the one then!

El Hijo del Santo, Atlantis & Rayo de Jalisco Jr. v Negro Casas, El Canek & Apolo Dantes (CMLL, 7/12/96) You could say this was a Santo v Casas show. And by "you could say," what I'm definitively saying is that this was a Santo v Casas show. It's so much of a Santo v Casas show that everything not involving them really pales in comparison. They're at each other's throat from the very beginning as Santo hits a running knee lift while Casas is stepping through the ropes, then drops him with a straight right to the face. And we're off to the races from there, brothers. The first 8-10 minutes are all Santo and Casas. Everyone else stands around watching, unsure if they should get involved while deep down knowing they probably shouldn't. At one point Apolo Dantes looks at Casas like "are you taking that?" and then a minute later there's another shot of him standing there like "well I guess he wasn't taking that." I think there was a 20-second period where both of them were on their respective apron before Casas comes in and sprints over to get at Santo again. It just escalates from there, spills to the floor, referees get involved, some suits plead with Casas to let it be over, fans in a frenzy. This was legit some of the best pull-apart brawling ever, where they'd be separated for a brief moment before one of them would break free and attack the other, every instance of it a little more wild than the last. There's about a dozen cops on the scene and Casas runs through rows of spectators while pensioners and children scatter. Santo will headbutt Casas until he's sprawled over someone's lap, then he'll get up and charge again and this time Santo is left lying underneath a row of fixed seats. The cops and referees nearly manage to usher Casas through the curtain, but he gets loose and sprints down the ramp and they're at it again. It was madness, like a genuine street brawl where the police are called and friends and family members are in tears on the side of the road. The problem is that nothing else is hitting those heights. When they're finally cleared from ringside the other four guys settle into an actual match, but it's hard not to actively want the camera to cut backstage for some more carnage with even other wrestlers trying to put out the fire. When the backstage cuts stop you hope the fight spills back out to ringside again, but it never happens. The remainder of the match sets up a 2 v 2 tag the following week, and it's fine and everything, it's just that nothing was going to match Santo/Casas unless it was more Santo/Casas. Still, this was some phenomenal Santo/Casas and it's worth watching for that alone.

Ayako Hamada v Mary Apache (ARSION, 8/31/98) This was pretty neat. I thought Apache was a lot of fun with her quick armdrags and swanky matwork, including a really tight armbar-anaconda vice hybrid thing. Hamada is 17 here and that's sort of bonkers. How many matches could she have had by this point, considering she only made her debut a couple weeks prior? Three? Two? She was rough around the edges because of course she would be, but I liked how her scrappiness made up for it. There's an exuberance that's quite infectious and overall this worked as a pairing. Mikiko Futagami v Rie Tamada (ARSION, 8/31/98) Really good stuff. Tamada zeroes in on Futagami's leg early and pretty much stays focused on it all the way through. Ten years ago I'd have wanted Futagami to sell it BIGGER, but at this point I'm fine with how she drew attention to it. It was more understated yet she'd hobble and show signs of discomfort. She also tried to palm thrust Tamada's front teeth through her brain and that was more important than anything else. Tamada has a bandaged up shoulder and by the end Futagami is trying to pull it apart, and as always with ARSION they're awesome at milking those escapes and rope breaks for all they're worth. Michiko Ohmukai v Yumi Fukawa (ARSION, 8/31/98) Not a patch on the April match, but still decent. Ohmukai's strikes - particularly her kicks - are a bit of an enigma as some will look atrocious and others will look fucking devastating and she had a few of both in this match. Which, tbf, is usually the case. In fairness to Fukawa she turned one of the former into an amazing spot by grabbing it out the air and locking in a sick kneebar, and then we got an example of the latter at the end when Ohmukai about took Fukawa's head off. I like how ARSION sell the gravity of these tournaments as the wrestlers will come in with something bandaged up from a previous round and inevitably those injuries will come into play. Ohmukai's shoulder is taped and if you want to convince me she worked the early parts with as much urgency as she did because she wanted to keep Fukawa from targeting that shoulder...well I'd probably listen. When Fukawa does get a chance to go after it I was absolutely buying Ohmukai tapping out. ARSION do near-submissions better than basically any non-shoot style promotion ever, FWIW. There were also parts of this where they stopped what they were doing and slapped each other really hard across the face. That even made a couple of the no-selling bits palatable. If you're going to no-sell something at least make it look like BELLIGERENCE has made you impervious to pain for a wee second there. Mariko Yoshida v Reggie Bennett (ARSION, 8/31/98) This is a great match up and of course this was badass. I like just about all of the wrestlers on the ARSION roster from this period for one reason or another, so this shouldn't be read as a knock on them, but Yoshida is different gravy and looks flat out amazing nearly every time she shows up. The early matwork here was fantastic and nobody else really does it quite at that level. She was crawling all over Reggie trying to work around the size disadvantage, trying to hook a limb in a way that wouldn't allow Reggie to literally just fall on top of her and smother her. Reggie is a blast and more than holds her own on the mat. Where did she actually go after ARSION? Yoshida was for giving nothing easy and Reggie had to fight for every throw just as much as Yoshida had to fight for every armbar or ankle lock. Yoshida cracking the code with the slickest armbar you've seen is a pretty awesome finish. It wasn't like she focused on a specific limb through the match, she was just grabbing whatever was there, used one hold then would transition to another when it presented itself, just constantly recalibrating as necessary.

Deeb is the business. I've been diving deep into AEW the last month or so, specifically from the September PPV last year up until the current day, and she's been a total superstar in everything. That's only a small handful of matches, granted, but still, she looks far and away the best woman on the roster and I hope she wins the belt at the PPV. Works a body part like a mean bastard, has lots of nifty holds, routinely works the ring post figure-four into her matches and that alone should make her a top 10 candidate, just a really fun wrestler that I couldn't even have told you was still wrestling a month ago.

Hook is going to come out and stand in Danhausen's corner next week and the pop will rival Bruno in the Garden.

Dante Martin has maybe the most absurd hops I've ever seen in wrestling and as a strength and conditioning coach I want to watch his matches just to see how high he'll jump each time. If he and Fenix have a 2022 version of 1999 Blitzkrieg v 1999 Blitzkrieg I'll be pretty happy. Probably.

I can be a miserable bastard, an old man yelling at clouds and someone who generally isn't huge on that sort of thing, but the Danhausen stuff has been way more palatable than I was expecting. The main reason is that nobody is actually taking the curse stuff seriously other than him (although I haven't seen too much of it so maybe I'm wrong). He's doing all this goofy Papa Shango nonsense and thinks he's scared off Tony Nese, but obviously it's Hook Nese is running from and there was one moment where even Danhausen was like "holy shit this is ACTUALLY working?" oblivious to Hook behind him. I'm honestly shocked at how enjoyable I've found it. It's pretty much the ideal midcard storyline and people are clearly into it, so fair play to all involved.

Darby is a complete lunatic. Opening match on the B show? Fuck it, suplex me off the apron, why not. Fun wee match. The pop for Hook finally shaking Danhausen's hand will rival Austin hitting the Stunner on Vince. Prolly.

I hope Kingston admitting to literal murder isn't something that will hold up in court but I'll tell you what, there's probably no one I believe more when they say they're going to put someone in the ground than Eddie Kingston. He was amazing in that segment. I can get behind this sports entertainment shtick of Jericho's and I thought "the AEW Galaxy" was an amusing line. Jericho and his boys flinging the fireball in Kingston's face ruled and if the JAS decide to just work Memphis tropes into everything they do going forward then they can have my money right now. I have no real idea who this Danhausen fella is but the graphic for him and Hook having a face-to-face on Rampage just about got the biggest pop of the night. This Hook laddie is over as balls. Amazing bit of commentary during the BCC trios: Regal: "[Danielson]'s everything I wish I could've been." JR: "You were pretty good yourself." Regal: "Not as good as he is." Super fun match as well, probably the best BCC trios I've seen so far. Wardlow/Archer was a hoot. Serena Deeb fucking rules. The other day I watched her match with Shida where Shida gets her 50th win, purely on a whim, and it was tremendous and Deeb was going after Shida's leg like a Rottweiler. She was amazing again here and pretty easily my favourite woman in the company. That Guevara bump off the missed whateverthefuck off the ladder was sort of terrifying. I thought all in all they managed to cover pretty well for him being clearly out of it. I don't have much interest in Sky or Kazarian but a mixed tag with Guevara/Conti against Someone/VanZant would be sort of fun maybe? This won't mean much to all of you who are probably already watching this week to week anyway, but that's three weeks in a row now where I've watched Dynamite in one sitting (the next day because I am not a young man anymore and who's sitting up until 3am on a Wednesday?), and I legitimately haven't done that with a wrestling show in about 15 years.

I guess it's a sign of the times that I no longer know the difference between a Code Red and a Canadian Destroyer. The main reason I give JR the benefit of the doubt is that he *usually* seems to be at least somewhat happy in his work whenever I've listened to him. Or at least happier than he was in WWE by the end.

I didn't read JR's "shucks, I guess people DO still like pro wrestling" bit as a dig against the more "modern" stuff in AEW. I read it as more of a dig against WWE where I guess there's this thing that they only do Sports Entertainment and a match build around "fundamentals" and duelling limb work would probably never get a This is Awesome chant (I haven't really watched any WWE in forever so I have no idea if that's the case). I loved Punk/Dustin, largely for the reasons you only thought it was super solid. They built it around duelling limb work and the selling of the limb damage was great, it was pretty "minimalist" (other than maybe 53-year-old Dustin Rhodes hitting a fucking Canadian Destroyer, which, as someone who's only properly dived into AEW over the last couple weeks, I was not expecting), they slowed the pace down and let things marinate, they got progressively tetchy with each other as the match went, etc. Things that I geek out for. I'm not saying that's the only AEW match to have any of that stuff (obviously it isn't), but it's one of the only ones I've seen that put it all together the way they did. It certainly felt unique within the context of current AEW, and maybe mainstream American wrestling as a whole, though I don't watch enough to know if that's remotely accurate. I also don't know nor particularly care who was the better guy in it, but I came away from it thinking it was probably my favourite AEW match of the year, the one that played to my stylistic preferences the most, and that CM Punk is maybe my favourite wrestler in the world in the year 2022 despite never being much of a CM Punk guy at any other point in my life.

This was my takeaway from the Garcia match as well. I wound up basically watching it twice because my Fite stream was ropey the first time. Nobody is as scrappy and compelling as Kingston and I loved him just throwing chops at Garcia's quad because it happened to be there at the time and Eddie was trying to mount a comeback. He might be better now than he was 15 years ago. He's amazing.

I wish we had a thousand versions of this match-up, or at least a baker's dozen. We have two hundred Flair/Kerry matches, even a mere REGULAR dozen of Murdoch/Reed shouldn't be too much to ask for. The September match might be the best US match of the decade and I thought that the first time I saw it thirteen years ago, but I remembered a whole lot less about this one other than it going over half an hour. I think it's a step down from September, but not by a lot and of course it ruled like fuck. It was also very different from the first match, when they quite easily could've worked the same contest with a rejigged finish. The first fifteen minutes are for Reed's TV title while anything after that is for Murdoch's North American belt, which is a cool sort of wrinkle. TV title or not, those first 15 minutes were pretty much a masterclass in building to a punch. Not a big highspot, no piledriver, no brainbuster, just a punch. They're still face v face so work clean early, even if you know Murdoch is the most likely to drag things off the rails if it comes to it (like the September match). Reed works the arm and it's decent enough, plus Murdoch is always interesting working from below. They half tease things breaking down, both of them looking like they're about to throw a fist at one or two points, but it never comes to that and they do in fact keep it clean. Reed just keeps grinding him down with the hammerlock and armbar and Murdoch is frustrated, then we get the first moment of chicanery from Murdoch as he backs Reed into the corner, waits for the ref' to try and break them up, and shoves him away so he can throw a forearm that, while legal in and of itself, was at the very least unsporting. I like that Reed under most circumstances would've retaliated, but here seemed intent on seeing out that first fifteen minutes to make sure the TV title was safe. So he keeps himself in check and goes back to the arm despite Murdoch getting more surly, even resorting to throwing VERY questionable pot shots from the headlock. When the fifteen minutes are up Reed's title is safe and Murdoch is clearly annoyed, but now it's all about the North American title. And Reed hasn't forgotten about those little pot shots or that sneaky forearm. They both hit the ropes, Murdoch clears Reed with a leapfrog, then upon landing turns around into an absolute bastard of a haymaker. They'd built that one shot up from the start, feeding the crowd opportunities for Reed to take it earlier but holding back, Murdoch going from obviously legal elbows to questionable forearms to sly rabbit punches. The crowd knew it was coming at some point, and when it connected it resonated perfectly. Murdoch sold it like it took the whole jaw off him as well, losing a giant wad of spit or maybe a row of teeth before falling through the ropes and stumbling around on the floor. It was one punch but it felt like a blast from a cannon. The second half is tremendous; really just a brilliant fifteen minutes of duelling limb work, starting with Murdoch going after Reed's leg. He throws some of the best stomps ever, right to the kneecap, the side of the knee, the back of it, then pretty much everywhere else on Reed's head and body. That has him on top for a while until Reed goes back to the arm from earlier, which sets up a finishing run of both picking apart a limb. The way they sold exhaustion along with the body part damage down the stretch is some of the best you'll see. I also like how this never degenerated into a brawl like the September match did. It never turned into a fist fight and, barring Murdoch repaying Reed with a carbon copy haymaker of his own, I can't even remember any instances of them punching each other in the back half of the match. Reed's lightning bolt right at the midpoint suggested it would go that route, but it largely stayed on the straight and narrow. Good first half, exceptional second half, and Reed hoisting the belt up in the air at the end while all the black kids in attendance rush to the front row was fucking biblical. That's yer pro wrestling right there.

Remember there was a time when Michael Hayes was not only NOT considered the best Freebird, but actively considered the WORST Freebird? What a ridiculous world we lived in. The DVDVR Texas set was quite the eye-opener for me, as prior to that I had always considered Gordy to be the best wrestler of the Freebirds by a distance, while Hayes was the promo guy (an incredible promo guy, but still). I have been wrong many times in my long and foolish life and I was very wrong about Michael P.S. Hayes. Because Hayes was the godking of the ten-minute bar fight, the rabid cage match or strap match, where he would try and claw someone's eyes out when it became apparent that he couldn't weasel his way out of a fight. He was a cornered animal and hell mend whoever did the cornering (usually a Von Erich). By '88 he was a full blown babyface, and I can't recall how that came about but by Christ this was an amazing babyface Michael Hayes performance. His babyface energy was off the charts here and people were bonkers for him. It would be hard to imagine these two being running buddies five years earlier; hard to imagine a point in time where these Texas crowds were going ballistic for Hayes being the one getting his clock cleaned. He threw some awesome punch combos while Buddy pinballed all over the shop for him, including a sequence early where Hayes popped him off the apron and Roberts landed on the announcer's table. Hayes stomps a mudhole in Roberts in the corner like the herald of Stone Cold and then moonwalks into the middle of the ring and I think someone fainted in the crowd. They brawl around the floor and Hayes clobbers Buddy in the back of the head with a chair and you almost cover your eyes knowing what you know about CTE in the year 2022. This was about seven minutes all in, and I loved it when I watched it 10+ years ago and I'm glad it was as great as I remembered.