Stiva

Not to mention taking entire segments of shows to do a baby shower, advertise his reality show and do tone-deaf, patriotic promos because he has a psychotic desire to recreate all of his daddy’s programs. For as much as AEW attempts to make everything connected, Cody’s segments may as well be from a different promotion. As much as I find the Young Bucks borderline unwatchable, they’re plugged into a lot of the various programs on the show and acknowledge things. Plus, you know they’re going to get their comeuppance at some point. It really feels that, once Darby finally beat Cody, he’d served his purpose for the fed

Almost forgot Wild Thing! They really should get as many recognisable and fitting songs they can muster as theme music. Part of the reason why ECW felt so cool at the time and it can work again

You could really tell that they’re ramping up the numbers since the crowd sounded pretty unsweetened tonight. My jaw actually dropped when Cody started his promo; just totally out of left-field and Ogogo has only cut about 2 anti-American promos hasn’t he? Cody wants to do so much old-school shit that he hasn’t got the patience to get there. That, coupled with his complete lack of self-awareness, makes him a heel in my book. I say it all the time but that main event reinforces that Darby Allin is the man for their future. Make 2022 the year of Darby, I say. Glad to see Miro get a good showing and that match was fucking great. Babyface Inner Circle has lost all appeal and really doesn’t work, outside of a few moments last week so it’s probably best that they fade away. Put the rocket to Santana and Ortiz and give us a good, long series with FTR. Britt Baker’s promo was awesome and it’s probably been the right idea to give her the big win in front of a packed house. Did I miss it or did they not announce any matches for next week? Is that a first? And, holy shit at The Bucks retiring SCU and them barely even mentioning or lingering with it. You know, you don’t have to take from WCWs shitty years, TK. That surely should have been the match to headline the California show?! Knowing the Bucks’ convoluted, shitty booking, they’ll probably give SCU one last chance and run it again there. Didnt think the show was too bad overall but the big moments and decisions were handled in a way that soured the good stuff.

This MLW deal has to be Nick Khan’s doing, right? Scenes when he eventually takes control and explodes NXT

Forgot to mention Ethan Page's Golf Dad ensemble. I assume this all leads to AEWs first Dynamite triple threat with Page vs Scorpio vs Darby but Ethan Page was out here looking like a dad enjoying a freshly mowed lawn in July. Darby should hopefully take them both out since Miro/Darby is the money match, baby. With the win records the way they are, they're definitely building to Darby/Cassidy as a TV main but part of me thinks they need to move past Moxley and Kingston fairly soon. Renee is about to burst so I assume there's going to be an angle to take Moxley out but you can do Omega/Kingston at DoN. Christian is being positioned so he takes out all of Team Taz one by one and Cage beating Hangman is purely designed so that when Christian beats Brian Cage, it sets him up for the Omega match. The problem is that Miro is clearly being established as the new big threat and the logical match is Miro/Darby with Miro going over. Maybe they do the program where Miro is constantly kicking the shit out of Kip and when it comes to the big match, Kip costs Miro the TNT title but who cares about Kip Sabian? Either way, the fact you can have such a far reaching conversation about who is ready for what title shot and who deserves what is a testament to the booking of AEW; even when they get things wrong, which they absolutely do, they still understand the art of protecting their top guys and that's something to be applauded. And that's before I mention Sammy Guevara. I've been 100% sure that this entire Pinnacle/Inner Circle feud was designed to push him to the stratosphere and now that he's first in Blood and Guts, he's going to be in there from the start, have a great shine in the first 5 minutes, showcase his selling for the rest of the time and i'll be amazed if he doesn't get the pin. Probably on Spears but that's the exact reason he's in the Pinnacle. I can only assume there's going to be an angle where MJF kicks him out for literally anybody else.

Could give or take the first hour up until the parley but thought the show really pulled around with the second hour. Heel Bucks and their wink-nudge bullshit had me skipping through my first Dynamite match in forever but I enjoyed the SCU promo on them. I don’t know how you can look past Darby as the future man of AEW at this point; Vance, while improving, is still green around the gills and Darby constructed a match around the spots he had and made it feel different from his previous defences. Week to week, he’s doing interesting things every time out and all of his matches feel like must-watch events. Popped for Miro attacking that Twitch streamer/Penelope’s manager and the next two weeks look great. If Moxley/Nagata doesn’t lead to Nagata buddying up with Moxley and Kingston as the three baddest dudes in the land, what are we even doing here?

What a great PPV opener with all four busting their guts out to have a strong match. I don’t seem to remember Road Dogg ever moving this quick but he was right there with the other three. Edge and Christian were a great team at this period and it’s refreshing to note that they could work these opening matches, complete with fairly complex finishing sequences and pull them off great and they weren’t just a team that excelled in the big stunt show matches. X-Pac being busted hardway (I think) was an absolutely insane thing to happen in the opening match of the night. Really solid stuff and the kind of thing that WWF just wasn’t pulling off on the undercard the year previous.

I always assumed that the end of Page’s little arc would be him leading The Dark Order against The Elite but everyone but Silver has been pushed to the background in that stable these days.

Well. Let’s hope the match is still strong on mute

I love Waltman but the depth of the field this time around has me reconsidering. He really was a phenomenal babyface, right out of the gate but I feel like I need to watch more of his 2000 heel run where he was positioned opposite Jericho for a couple of months and his TNA work before he hits my ballot this time round.

They released Kalisto too?! I hope that’s a case of a worker asking for their release because he feels like someone you could keep around for years in any role.

Oh man, give me the Samoa Joe global retirement run. It’s incredibly shady and yet more bullshit from WWE but I can’t lie when I say that’s all I can think about

I hope the Roddy resigning angle leads to him showing up on Smackdown

The first 10 minutes or so of this are some of the most violent in company history when you look at just how little give the surrounding areas and the chains had in this specific chamber. There’s huge indentations on HHHs back after a few minutes and then RVD is just getting smashed kidney first into the support beams, not even the chain-links and everyone is just taking gnarly bumps on the steel in these tight, confined spaces. And then, they don’t replay it but RVD getting no height on the splash from the top of the pod and landing, knee first on HHHs throat is absolutely sickening stuff. Full credit for continuing on. After that, it descends into some more plodding brawling which leads into a finishing stretch that gets the crowd really into it, even if I can take or leave HHH and Michaels’ finishing runs, even if here it was fairly fresh. The right winner for the crowd but sadly, it just couldn’t sustain the hot opening once RVD was gone.

This lacks the more violent feel of the original due to it lacking RVD being hell bent on leaping into and off of all of the steel (not to mention HHH not having his throat crushed) but it really is a much tighter and focused match that shits the bed on the finish. Even Nash is great as the few things he’s tasked to do, he does with real force and oomph. The Goldberg run is absolutely fantastic and not even Michaels can stretch out his finishing run with him past the point of boredom as he just destroys everyone and the chamber in a wild 4 minute stretch. Put the title on him here and it’s one of the best Chamber matches, instead, Hunter bullshits his way to another win and then drops the title a month later when the damage is done and the bloom is off the rose.

Don’t want to tread over old ground too much but that Bad Bunny match was a miracle and damn did the Miz ever work it perfectly. He had to be in the perfect spot with the right timing to help BB along and he did it well. Just a really solid as hell, old pro performance from a source you wouldn’t expect

I believe Meltzer reported that the Bayley match was one that they made the decision to call in the ring which is why I nominated it. I could be mistaking it with the Charlotte match but either way, I think they trusted her to go out without too much of a safety net by the end, albeit with workers they knew were good and could carry the load if things went wrong

His 2020 Rumble performance is one of my favourite Rumble runs of all time and I think it speaks to what he’s done so well in his second run; subvert the expected while still delivering the goods. They seemed to use Brock as a vehicle for experimenting with their formula and he, for the most part, made it work.

Ronda Rousey Admittedly, she has a very small pool of matches and this nomination is based on the assumption that she’s going to eventually come back and pick up where she left off. But for that year, every one of her big matches was appointment viewing; she had one of the best modern Mania tag matches where she already looked like a natural and then came the title run; staring down the assembly line of WWEs women and delivering every time. Was able to work matches underneath (Bayley, Nikki Bella) with great selling and attention to detail, she could work as the superior grappler who gave just enough to her opponent (Sasha, Alexa) and when she had to bring it in hot angles in the build to Mania, she did. A lot of her matches felt like the Brock template of 12-15 taken one further as she added more vulnerability, fantastic bumping along with a great mix of strikes, submissions and an almost unnatural understanding of how to construct a main event match. I really hope she comes back since, even as good as her one year is, I don’t think it’s enough for her to get on but the prospect of her coming back and working the likes of Io, Asuka, Shayna, Bianca and even Mercedes Martinez feels like she could have a top tier run before 2026. RECOMMENDED MATCHES: Ronda Rousey vs Bayley 28/01/2019 Ronda Rousey vs Nikki Bella 28/10/2018 Ronda Rousey and Kurt Angle vs HHH and Stephanie McMahon 08/04/2018

Brock vs Bryan is up there for me. The nut shot alone is one of the all-time great momentum shift spots and that simple reversal of the usual Suplex City section sets the match into overdrive. Bryan unleashing ROH World Champion wrestling machine on Lesnar while building a WWE Main Event climax is pretty stupendous. The Styles and Balor matches had a similar blueprint but neither man could structure it better and make it more memorable than Bryan

Does anyone do a Best of Mania weekend comp for people like me who are either asleep or too busy to watch all these shows?

The last three matches delivered in a way that NXT hasn’t for me personally in a long while. Io is absolutely fantastic and really should get the rocket strapped to her on the main roster. Really dug how WALTER/Ciampa was worked exactly how it should have been and it’s been long enough that I forgot at how good WALTER is at taking offence, selling incrementally while still retaining that presence and believability. I can take or leave Ciampa but thought he was great too. Got to think Vince sees big money in WALTER, if he even watches NXT anyway

Maybe the Bucks could write a new book called “Killing the Territory” This whole stuff is putrid; get the tag belts on Death Triangle, lead into a feud with Moxley and Kingston and banish The Good Brothers back to Impact. Then run a straight up, simple story with Omega and Page for the title. Garbage overacting, completely nonsensical motivations from week to week with shitty promos. Nobody is coming out of this looking good. Darby was the clear star again.

At this point, I think Darby has to be the one to take the belt off Omega tbh. He’s the only guy that feels ready to be pushed to the top considering how special his matches feel and how over he is. He also has that Foley quality where he can remain strong in defeat because it takes so much punishment to actually pin him that he wouldn’t lose much if Miro took the TNT title off him and completely murdered him in the process. Then he could come to Moxley’s aid against Omega by doing a 360 Benihana from the roof of Dailly’s Place and he’s good to go. As for Jungle Boy, Jurassic Express feels like an albatross round his neck now. I think he doesn’t need to split from them per se but I think he should be positioned as a predominantly solo act who teams with the others rarely. I actually agree that the MJF/Jericho thing is designed for Sammy to be the guy who comes out of it the strongest. Wouldn’t surprise me if he gets the win in whatever big match is coming up with the factions. These guys are all positioned well enough and kept strong but there definitely needs to be steps made to remind people that these sorts of guys are the future and feature them more often. I’d have thought an easy tap-in would have been to do vignettes showing Page growing into the leader of the Dark Order, maturing out of his insecurities and gaining that mentality he needs to win the big one which he’s been missing. Instead, they had him ride a lawn mower around and waste time with Matt Hardy’s Midcard Maniacs. Britt Baker getting more promo time out of a loss feels like the right step to me. Reminds me of when Austin would always be allowed a good chunk of time to speak and get over on Raw in 97, even when he’d been beaten.

I think they hand the workers a list and they pick the least shit one. So imagine what must have been on the list for Chris Hero to go with “Kassius Ohno”