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Welcome to the Let's Watch Old PPVs thread! As you may have noticed, the world is kind of hosed up right now. We're all cooped up inside, slowly going crazy because even if your normal lifestyle largely involves sitting at home and shitposting on SA (some refer to this as "working from home") like mine does, it's not nearly as fun when you have to do it. With that in mind, I figured I'd do something to take my mind off the hellscape that is the world in 2020 and start a thread where we can watch old PPVs and chat about them. The WWE Network is currently offering all WWF/E PPVs for free, so there's plenty to choose from even if you don't get a free trial for the full service (or pay for it, but who does that). PPVs and major shows from other companies are fine as well, so it's not WWE only. If you want to watch New Blood Rising or Victory Road 2009, knock yourself out! So how does this work? Well, we've had a bunch of similar threads before (I particularly enjoyed Rarity's 80s WWF thread, that one was great. It's goldmined now, which would be why I couldn't find it at first), in which the OP watches a bunch of shows and posts their commentary. While I'll get things started here in a bit with an overly lengthy (multi-part) look at Survivor Series 2002, I'm not going to hog the entire thread with my ramblings. If you watch a show and want to talk about it, write a review, laugh at terrible Attitude era gimmick matches or whatnot, this is the place to do it! You don't need to go into massive detail if you don't want to either, you don't have to include screenshots or anything like that, just post whatever feels appropriate to you.  Or if you just want to sit back, read my nonsense and talk about the show, that's fine with me too, but I definitely encourage thread participation. I was also considering watchalong-type stuff where we all watch the same show and post our comments about it, and then choose another show for the next week, but we'll see how this thing will turn out. I'm not great at planning things out. The only rule here is that this is supposed to be a chill thread for chill folks (occasional rants about Jerry Lawler's commentary or other dumb poo poo notwithstanding), so please don't get weird if someone dislikes your favorite match or something. Aside from that, go nuts. The normal forum rules still apply, of course. THE SHOWS WWE Survivor Series 2002 by Doc M: Survivor Series 2002, Part 1 Survivor Series 2002, Part 2 Survivor Series 2002, Part 3 WWF In Your House: Canadian Stampede (1997) by Doc M WWE No Mercy 2005 by is pepsi ok ECW December to Dismember 2006 (  ) by Doc M:December to Dismember 2006, Part 1 December to Dismember 2006, Part 56 DMorbid fucked around with this message at 11:47 on Apr 3, 2020 |
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Mar 27, 2020 22:43
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Let's Watch Classic PPVs: WWE Survivor Series 2002 (Nov 17, 2002), Part One Before we plunge into the lowest depths of the Ruthless Aggression era or something like that, let's get things started with a PPV that is actually really good. Survivor Series 2002 is one of my favorite WWE shows of all time, or at least that's what my memory is telling me. I had this show on DVD and watched it over and over when I was a teenager, but I haven't seen it in years so now it's time to find out if Survivor Series 2002 holds up.  We start off with an intro package hyping up the main events. At No Mercy the previous month, Brock Lesnar defeated the Undertaker and retained his WWE Championship in an absolute bloodbath of a Hell in a Cell match, earning Taker's respect and turning face in the process. Brock's first heel challenger is none other than the Big Show, who turned heel earlier in the year by joining the nWo on RAW and then spent several months doing pretty much nothing after the nWo disbanded following Kevin Nash's latest quad explosion. Regardless, Big Show is now on Smackdown and we're supposed to take him seriously as a monster heel again, so he's been brutalizing Brock for several weeks (even press-slamming him off the stage at one point) as Brock's manager Paul Heyman desperately urges his client not to fight Big Show at Survivor Series. "You can't F5 him, he's too big! He's 7 feet tall and weighs 500 pounds!" and so on. However, Brock is not backing down, so the match is on.  The Smackdown main event is not even remotely the focus of the promo video, though, because Survivor Series 2002 also sees the debut of the Elimination Chamber match and the majority of the package is understandably dedicated to building up that match. RAW General Manager Eric Bischoff talks about what a genius he is and how he's once again proven himself superior to the competition, who in this case would be Smackdown GM Stephanie McMahon.  Yes, that's the shot they used for Stephanie in the video. I don't think she'd approve an unflattering shot like that in a promo package these days, because as we all know she's the coolest and most powerful woman in the world. Bischoff puts over the Elimination Chamber and the World Heavyweight Championship, and the video ends.  Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler welcome us to Madison Square Garden and hype up the Elimination Chamber as Saliva's "Always" plays in the background. As far as buttrock themes for early 00s WWE shows go, you could do a lot worse.  Our opening contest sees the Dudley Boyz (Bubba Ray and Spike, as D-Von was drafted to Smackdown and became Reverend D-Von, best known for having some guy called "Deacon Bautista" as his henchman) and Jeff Hardy going up against 3 Minute Warning and Rico in an elimination tables match.  I always liked the glowy paint Jeff wore around this time, it really made him stand out.  I'd probably advise against that, lady. I'm sure it'd be a good time, but there is a good chance you'd get arrested.  Meanwhile, 3 Minute Warning - Jamal and Rosey - have been acting as Bischoff's heavies for a few months, and Rico somehow ended up hanging out with them after the whole fiasco that was the Billy & Chuck wedding. Jamal and Rosey, of course, would later become Umaga and a Super Hero In Training respectively, and sadly both men have since passed away at an early age because wrestling. The faces have the upper hand early on, with some double team moves including the Wazzup headbutt by Spike. Jeff also dives out of the ring and seems to hit his head on one of the tables propped up against the barricade. They also do the whole "Get the tables" shtick and Bubba brings one to the ring, setting it up in the corner. The heels get the advantage and Rosey tries to spear Spike through the table in the corner, but Spike dodges and Rosey goes through it instead. This does not count as an elimination because you have to put your opponent through the table for it to count. Rosey completely nosells going through the table and throws the wreckage at Spike instead. Jeff dives off the top rope and just kind of bumps into Rosey. I'm not sure what they were supposed to do there (looked like Rosey was supposed to catch him), but the commentary tries to cover for the botch by saying Rosey swatted Jeff out of the air as the crowd starts a loud "YOU hosed UP" chant. Spike then goes for the Dudley Dog on Rico, but Jamal and Rosey catch him and just haul him through the table. The faces get back on the attack after crotching both members of 3MW on the top rope (Rosey's sell is great because he basically does a moonsault as he lands), but that doesn't last long. Rosey takes Jeff to one of the arena exits and tries to put him through another table, but Bubba comes in for the save and Rosey ends up on the table instead, as Jeff re-enacts his famous spot from Royal Rumble 2000.  I like his shrug just before he jumps. That's Rosey out of the match, and Jeff has also put himself out of commission for a bit. Unfortunately, his presence is soon required in the ring as Rico goes up to the top rope and Jeff's supposed to push him off, but Jeff misses his cue and Rico has to shout "COME ON JEFF GODDAMMIT" which is cut out from the Network version. Jeff then tries to attack Jamal outside the ring by running on top of the barricade, but smashes face first into a table carried by Jamal. He also slips while running on the barricade, but just about manages to save it so the spot isn't completely ruined. This doesn't eliminate Jeff because he put himself through the table (Jamal clearly pushed the table towards him, but that apparently doesn't count), but Jamal fixes that by putting Jeff on another table on the ringside and hitting a diving splash off the top rope.  Holy poo poo, that looked scary. That's a real big boy landing on you. Jeff is out, and now it's just Bubba against Rico and Jamal. Bubba fights back and takes out Jamal with a top rope powerbomb through another table. Remember when Bubba used to powerbomb women through tables every week and clearly enjoyed it a bit too much? Ah, the Attitude era at its finest. Rosey and Jamal should be out of the match but they both come back to the ring and start beating on Bubba as another table is set up in the middle of the ring. D-Von Dudley runs in, wearing the Dudleyz camo once again, and makes the save, driving off Rosey and Jamal (the latter does the Rikishi-style flipping sell on a clothesline, which looks pretty cool). 3-D to Rico through the table, and Bubba is declared the winner as he and D-Von celebrate together and the crowd goes ballistic.  This, of course, marked the end of the Reverend D-Von gimmick, as D-Von would be back on RAW and once again teaming with his half-brother. This was probably the right call, because nobody cared about either of the two as solo wrestlers and Bubba teaming with Spike just wasn't the same. I wonder what happened to that Deacon Bautista dude. This was a fun opener with a bunch of crazy spots including Jeff's big dive, and it did a great job getting the crowd into the action. It was kind of botchy at times, especially when Jeff was involved (he'd be out of the company the next summer after refusing to go to rehab), but still an enjoyable car wreck of a match. Using my highly scientific rating system that is solely based on how entertaining I found the match, I'll give this one three stars out of five. ***  We go to Stacy Keibler at WWE's The World restaurant, formerly known as WWF New York. She welcomes everyone to the show, and informs us Test (who is not yet dead, and is dating Stacy in storyline... possibly in real life at this time as well, I don't care enough to look up if that was the case) couldn't be there because she sent him on a worldwide PR tour "because there's nothing more than he likes to be surrounded by a throng of Testicles." Somehow, the mention of "Testicles", who were supposedly Test's fans although I doubt any ever actually existed, is the least awkward part of that sentence.  Saliva then performs "Always" live, as we're treated to an excellent video package hyping up the various matches we'll be seeing tonight. The lead singer looks like the Undertaker's goony cousin. I'll say one thing for Saliva here - they're at least a hell of a lot better live than Downstait, although that's not exactly a high bar to clear.  This clip from Summerslam 2002 combined with the line "I see the blood all over your hands/Does it make you feel more like a man?" is approximately 900% cooler than anything involving Triple H or Saliva has any right to be. WWE's video department was just fantastic at the time - hell, at Wrestlemania X-7 they briefly made Limp Bizkit seem cool! After "Always" finishes, Michael Cole and Tazz plug Saliva's album as the band goes into another, much worse song to remind us they're in fact still Saliva and very much not cool. With that brief musical interlude out of the way, let's get back to the wrestling. Our next match is for the Cruiserweight Championship, as champion Jamie Noble takes on Billy Kidman.  At this point, Noble's doing the trailer trash gimmick and is accompanied to the ring by his girlfriend Nidia.  One of many classy crowd signs we'll be seeing tonight. Anyway, Kidman's pinned Noble twice leading up to this match, and now we'll see if he can pull it off when it counts and win the title. Both Kidman and Noble are WCW alumni, but I can't remember if they ever wrestled each other in WCW. Surely they must have had at least one match there.  Kidman enters to his "You Can Run" theme, which is actually debuting here. I always thought it was kind of a bad fit for Kidman, but what do I know? Some nice action to start the match off, but I'm slightly distracted by the sizable patch of blood on the mat.  Tazz eventually takes a break from drooling over Nidia to mention that Rico suffered an injury when he was put through the table by the Dudleys, getting a big cut on his arm, and that's where the blood on the mat came from. This is a WWE cruiserweight match, so it kinda seems to be running at half speed. Noble hits the Falcon Arrow, but Kidman kicks out at two. Nobody kicks out of the Falcon Arrow! Kidman goes up top, but Nidia pulls Noble out of the ring as Tazz sings "What's Love Got To Do With It" and almost hits a correct note once. I love how Cole then mentions Tina Turner and Tazz goes "Who?" Nidia tries to distract Kidman but gets knocked off the apron by Noble when Noble goes to hit Kidman and misses. Noble hits the Tigerbomb for another two count, and goes for a superplex off the top rope but gets countered with a massive sitout facebuster off the top.  That was cool. Noble survives, however, and places Kidman on the top rope again for an enormous DDT.  Somehow, Kidman kicks out of that. Noble's down and Kidman goes up top for the SSP, but Nidia distracts him again. Noble climbs up top but gets knocked down, and Kidman hits the SSP for the win and the championship.  Another good match, albeit a bit on the short side and kinda slow-paced because that's what WWE cruiserweight matches were (are?). Great work from both guys, and some crazy spots I didn't expect to see. That's another three stars, good stuff. Chris Benoit and Kurt Angle have been bickering with each other since they were put together as a tag team, and keep doing so backstage. Eventually, they get on the same page and hug it out at Kurt's insistence. Kurt is great, but I don't really want to talk about Benoit any more than I have to so let's move on. Chris Jericho is preparing for the Elimination Chamber match backstage. We saw RVD doing his own preparations earlier, and we'll be seeing the others as the night goes on.  Secret "F-View" footage shows Victoria talking to a mirror in her dressing room (why did Bischoff install hidden cameras in women's dressing rooms, that's loving creepy), doing the whole "Mirror, mirror on the wall" thing and finding out the mirror thinks Trish Stratus is prettier than her. She proceeds to have an argument with the mirror, smashes it (and the cardboard cutout of Trish in the dressing room, because she's obsessed with Trish) and storms off. JR and King talk about Victoria and the upcoming hardcore match between her and Trish for the Women's Championship. King says "Anything goes, I hope it's the clothes!" Thanks, King. Jerry Lawler's commentary around this time was completely insufferable when it came to women's matches, and this isn't even the worst we'll be hearing from him in the next few minutes. We cut to a video package hyping up the women's title match. Apparently, Victoria is jealous of Trish because they used to be fitness models together years ago and WWE was interested in both of them, but somehow Trish never let her get her chance. Trish won the Women's Championship at Unforgiven 2002 while Victoria "languished", and as of late she's been on a tear against Trish (and anyone who vaguely reminds her of Trish, as poor Terri Runnels got to find out). Victoria promises to take not only the title, but Trish's soul.  Victoria enters to a generic rock theme, no "All The Things She Said" yet. On the plus side, that means we don't need to listen to the terrible Network overdub. Victoria starts the match by attacking Trish during her entrance, choking Trish with her own ring jacket. As this is a hardcore match, we've got all sorts of weapons lying around, and the first foreign object Victoria produces is... a broomstick. Huh. Victoria chokes Trish with the broom and then goes to town with a trashcan lid. The action spills to the outside with Victoria still in control, and JR and King talk about how Victoria is jealous of Trish. King suggests it's because Trish is beautiful and gets all the attention from the guys and "the last time Victoria got whistled at was right before a train hit her." Yes, girls, if you don't look like Trish Stratus, you're a grotesque hag and nobody will ever find you attractive! (Not that you'd want to get wolf-whistled at by randos, but that's obviously not the point they're trying to make here) Thanks a bunch for that, Jerry (or, as I suspect, Vince over the headset). loving hell. Trish gets the advantage and clobbers Victoria with a trash can, then produces... oh, for gently caress's sake... an ironing board. Get it, because they're WOMEN?! Eh?  Trish and Victoria hit each other with some stiff kendo stick and trash can lid shots, and Victoria's nose is bleeding. This is a pretty hard-hitting match, and would be much more enjoyable if Jerry Lawler didn't go on about tearing clothes off. Christ. Victoria finds a mirror under the ring and is briefly distracted by it, so Trish gets the upper hand and hits the Chick Kick for a two count. Trish then hits a very sloppy bulldog in the corner, that looked nasty.  Another two count, as JR covers for the botch by calling it a "modified" bulldog. Victoria grabs a fire extinguisher under the ring and spends approximately six years trying to get it to work as Trish kinda flails at her from the ring and grabs her hair.  Eventually, Victoria manages to spray the extinguisher into Trish's face and hits a snap suplex (no Widow's Peak yet) for the win. Victoria is the new Women's Champion!  That was another solid effort. A women's hardcore match in 2002 was certainly a novelty, and since both women were also pretty capable in the ring it worked quite well from a match quality standpoint. Trish was still rather green at this time, but she was improving rapidly and held her own here, that horrifying bulldog aside. I'm gonna give this two and a half stars, having to dock half a star or so for the terrible commentary by Lawler. **˝ I think that's a good stopping point for now. Next time on Let's Watch Survivor Series 2002, we'll be starting with... oh, huh. Apparently, the WWE title match is next. I thought that was later in the show, but I guess not. Anyway, next time we'll find out if Brock Lesnar can F5 the Big Show! DMorbid fucked around with this message at 13:14 on Mar 28, 2020 |
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Mar 27, 2020 22:44
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Let's Watch Survivor Series 2002, Part Two Alright, let's get back to it. After the women's title match, we cut to Booker T preparing for the Elimination Chamber main event. JR and King put over the fact he's a five-time WCW champion, and now he's got the chance to win the World Heavyweight title (he's definitely not in there just to make up the numbers, no sir). Nothing too exciting about that, so let's move on to Jonathan Coachman interviewing Eric Bischoff. Bischoff talks about how great the Elimination Chamber is gonna be and how great he himself is, but is interrupted by Big Show.  Nice to see the original Xbox controller making a cameo. That's one of the handles. Big Show tells Bischoff he made a mistake trading him to Smackdown, because tonight Big Show will be the new WWE Champion.  Paul Heyman and Brock Lesnar are talking backstage, as Paul tells Brock he's worried about tonight's match (especially since Brock has a broken rib, which I thought was kayfabe but apparently he was legitimately injured) but says he will do everything he can to make sure his client will leave the Madison Square Garden as the WWE Champion.  Brock's face in this graphic is goofy as hell, but don't tell him I said that. We get another video package hyping up the title match, showing Big Show beating up the Undertaker, Brock himself and various other wrestlers. We also see how apprehensive Heyman is about the whole situation, and at one point Brock just tells Paul to shut up before he brutalizes Big Show with a chair on the go-home show. For whatever reason, Big Show wrestled in jeans during this period. Maybe he just wanted a different look for this monster heel run, because I haven't seen him dress like that before or since.  Brock doesn't even have the pyro yet. This was really early in his run, but I forgot his entrance was still this basic. At least he has the theme. The bell rings and the two lock up, and Big Show quickly gains ther advantage but Brock fights back. Big Show regains the advantage on the outside and smashes Brock's back into the ringpost, as Cole and Tazz sell how badly Lesnar's ribs are injured. Lesnar fights back again, and Show goes for the chokeslam but Lesnar suplexes him. Brock then hits a German Suplex on Show, which looks pretty impressive. Brock is now in control and goes for the F5, but Show counters with knees to the ribs. Brock runs into the referee and knocks him out of the ring, then hits Show with a huge belly-to-belly suplex. With the ref dead on the outside, Heyman throws a chair into the ring. Show goes for another chokeslam and gets a dick kick and a chairshot to the head (after blocking one with his fist, which was pretty awesome) for his troubles. Brock lifts Big Show up on his shoulders, and the F5 connects!  I know "there's no way he can slam the Big Show, oh wait he slammed the Big Show easily" has been done to death, but that F5 still looks impressive. Heyman looks completely flabbergasted by this feat of strength, as another referee runs to the ring to count the pin... only for Heyman to pull him out and deck him. Lesnar is less than pleased and glares at Heyman, who looks like he just saw his life flash before his eyes.  Brock chases after Heyman, who gets into the ring as Big Show picks up the chair and clobbers Brock with it. Chokeslam onto the steel chair, Big Show goes for the cover as the ref wakes up, and Brock Lesnar's undefeated streak is over. Big Show is the new WWE Champion.  Show and Heyman celebrate briefly in the ring, and then run off as swiftly as those two physically can before Brock is able to get up and murder them both. They make their way to a limo backstage and get the hell out of Dodge. This wasn't much of a match, to be quite honest. It was only a few minutes long, but that's fine because nobody wants to see Big Show in a lengthy bout and they were able to tell the story they wanted to. Nothing special but not a disaster either, I'll give it two stars out of five. ** Next up, we've got the tag team triple threat elimination match for the Smackdown tag titles. This is gonna be great. Look at this lineup:  The Smackdown Six, gently caress yeah. It's a shame Benoit ruined everything and it's difficult to enjoy his matches these days, but even if we ignore him it'll be a great time. Speaking of Benoit, he and Angle won the initial tournament for the tag titles, but the two fought with each other at the trophy ceremony so hard that they knocked down Stephanie McMahon and got slapped for their troubles. They eventually lost the titles to Edge and Rey Mysterio in a 2/3 falls match on Smackdown, and Los Guerreros have also been a thorn in their side recently. All of this leads to the elimination match we're about to witness. Before the match starts, we cut to... oh god, I forgot this was a thing at this time. Prepare for some absolute nonsense.  You sitting down? Okay. Dawn Marie was feuding with Torrie Wilson, so naturally she decided to seduce Torrie's father Al Wilson (played by Torrie's real father Al Wilson) to... uhh... what was the point of this storyline again? I remember Dawn and Torrie made out in a hotel room at one point because I think Dawn actually wanted Torrie and said she wouldn't marry Al if Torrie slept with her. These were the women's storylines on Smackdown, folks. Dawn then proceeded to marry Al (with both the bride and groom in their underwear at the ceremony), who died in storyline from having too much sex with Dawn on their honeymoon. Al has since passed in real life, presumably not for that reason. It all came to a head at Royal Rumble 2003, where Torrie beat Dawn in the FIRST EVER Stepmother vs. Stepdaughter match. In conclusion, Smackdown circa 2002-03 is a land of contrasts. Let's get back to the parts that aren't poo poo.  You know, back in 2002 I never quite appreciated the Smackdown Six properly. I liked Edge and Mysterio, but I was also a kid who was more into over-the-top storylines (not the one I just described) and flashy gimmicks than quality matches, at least until I saw Angle and Benoit fight each other at Royal Rumble 2003 a couple of months after this. That match utterly blew my mind.  The Guerreros are heels at this point, so the production team has deemed it suitable to display racist crowd signs during their entrance. This is why the producers get paid the big bucks, you know.  Benoit and Angle enter next, and even though they hugged it out earlier they still have separate entrances.  Edge and Mysterio also enter separately. Edge actually has his Rob Zombie theme on the Network, which was replaced by his original theme on the old DVD. "Never Gonna Stop", by the way, is my favorite Edge theme and it's not even close.  Instead of using the regular entranceway, Mysterio comes out via the separate stage that was set up for all the pyro. While we're on the topic of theme songs, can I just say I always hated Rey's first WWE theme? I always found it irritating, especially the goofy lyrics. I'm not a fan of Booyaka 619 either, but at least that's a little better suited for big matches. The teams take some time to agree upon who's going to start the match, and eventually they settle on Benoit and Mysterio. You don't actually have to tag in your own partner here, so Rey or Benoit could tag in one of the Guerreros if they wanted to. Rey keeps adjusting his mask during the match, and it's quite distracting. Edge is tagged in and goes to work on Benoit, but Benoit is able to tag Angle in. Angle then runs into Chavo to tag him in so he doesn't have to fight Edge himself. Some nice action between Edge and Chavo. Rey gets tagged in and hits a springboard splash on Chavo. Chavo tags Eddie into the ring, and Eddie delivers some elbows to Rey's skull before Rey pulls off some good lucha things. Angle gets back in against Rey and tosses Rey up to the top rope, but Rey loses his balance and eats poo poo on the mat. A bit of an unfortunate botch, but poo poo happens. Benoit gets back into the ring and goes for Mysterio's neck, working him over for a bit before tagging Kurt back in. Rey counters the Angle Slam to an arm drag, nicely done. The one botch aside, this has been nice and crisp work from everyone in the match. Eddie taunts Mysterio on the apron, as Rey is held in a front facelock by Angle for quite some time. Mysterio finally fights back, adjusts his mask some more, and takes down Angle with a spinning heel kick. Angle tries to tag in one of the Guerreros, but they get down from the apron so Angle has to tag in Benoit instead. Edge gets in the ring as well and cleans house, even hitting a belly to belly on Kurt. Edge goes for the spear on Angle, but Angle counters into the ankle lock and Benoit slaps on the Crossface as well. Mysterio makes the save with a springboard flying rear end on Angle.  I know that's called a seated senton, but come on. That's a flying rear end and you know it.  Shouldn't he have hit Benoit since Benoit was the legal man and could've still made Edge tap? In any event, Rey hits a diving tornillo on Chavo and Angle on the outside, so all three are down. Edge and Benoit fight in the ring, Benoit goes for a German Suplex and Eddie comes back in with a top rope sunset flip on Benoit and holy poo poo! Eddie gets thrown out again and Benoit plants Edge with three German Suplexes. Benoit goes for the diving headbutt on Edge but Eddie almost steals it with the frog splash, only for Benoit to break up the pin with the headbutt. Angle Slam to Eddie, followed by the ankle lock. I'm not sure why Cole is asking "WHO IS GONNA TAP?" because Benoit and Edge are the legal men here. If anyone's tapping, it's Edge because he's in the Crossface. Chavo clobbers Benoit in the back of the head with one of the belts and tosses the belt to Angle just before Benoit comes to. Benoit thinks Angle hit him, so the two begin pushing each other and Rey knocks them down with a missile dropkick. Rey hits a headscissors on Chavo on the outside, Edge hits the spear on Benoit in the ring and gets the three count, to thunderous boos despite being a face. That's Benoit and Angle out of the match, and now they take out their frustrations by beating up Edge, Rey and Chavo. Benoit and Angle immediately go back to fighting each other, and they argue all the way to the back. Meanwhile in the ring, the match continues between the Guerreros and Edge/Rey. Eddie tries to capitalize on Benoit and Angle's assault by pinning Edge, but Edge kicks out. The Guerreros have the advantage here because Edge and Rey are much worse for wear, so they're in control early in the second half of the match and do their best to lie, cheat and steal their way to victory. Edge eventually fights back by hitting a flapjack on both Guerreros, and manages to get back to Mysterio. Mysterio with some impressive lucha moves, and the Guerreros collide with each other in the corner followed by a spear from Edge. Mysterio gets a boost from Edge and hits Eddie with a big Frankensteiner off the top rope. In case you didn't catch on yet, this match rules. Rey hits the 619 on Eddie and signals for the West Coast Pop, but Chavo hits him in the back with the belt. Excuse me, the championship. Even all the way back in 2002, Michael Cole was very careful not to use the word "belt". Edge goes after Chavo on the outside, but Eddie locks Rey in the Lasso from El Paso and Rey taps out!  Los Guerreros are the new champions, and that is now four straight title matches with belts changing hands. That was a fantastic match. I'll give it four and a half stars, only docking a half star because of that one major botch and the fact watching Benoit makes me slightly uncomfortable. ****˝ Kane is preparing for the Elimination Chamber backstage. As JR and King talk about the action and hype up the main event, the Harvard fight song blares from the arena speakers and that can only mean one thing. Yep, Chris Nowinski is here.  Nowinski, of course, is better known and lauded these days for his work in CTE research and raising awareness of the effects of concussions in sports. This is only two months before Nowinski's final PPV appearance at Royal Rumble 2003, where he suffered his career-ending head injury in the Rumble match. Nowinski calls himself the only Harvard graduate in the arena and runs down the crowd in a basic Local Sports Team Heat heel promo. This is obviously the piss break segment before the main event. Nowinski goes on and on about how stupid New Yorkers are, until he is interrupted by Matt Hardy Version 1.0.  Survivor Series 2002 Matt Fact #2: Matt only drinks lowfat chocolate milk God, I love Matt Hardy Version 1.0 and his janky-rear end Windows Media Player 7 entrance with the Matt Facts. Matt has taken exception to Nowinski's insinuation that New Yorkers are stupid, because they're not stupid. They would be classified as losers. There's a huge difference, as he says. Matt and Nowinski keep arguing between themselves whether New Yorkers are stupid or losers, as Matt claims they are sucking the Mattitude out of him. Sucking worse than the Knicks, in fact. Eventually, the two reach a compromise - New Yorkers are both losers AND stupid, or "lupid" for short. This promo is awful, but that's probably intentional because it's soon interrupted by the sound of a siren.  BAH GAWD, IT'S THE BIG BAD BOOTY DADDY. Scott Steiner is the hottest free agent in WWE, and both RAW and Smackdown would absolutely love to sign him. He's clearly not here to talk about his contract situation, though, as he beats the poo poo out of Hardy and Nowinski and tosses them both out of the ring. But he's not done yet! Steiner politely asks for a mic (he screams "GIMME A loving MIC", which is unsurprisingly absent from the Network version of the show). So, what does the biggest and baddest and bootiest and daddiest free agent in sports entertainment have to say? Is he going to tell us which brand he's going to sign with?  "THIS GOES TO ALL MY FREAKS IN NEW YORK CITY: BIG POPPA PUMP IS YOUR HOOKUP, HOLLA IF YOU HEAR ME!" *mic drop* Oh, okay then. That was enlightening. Steiner also yells at the camera to inform us that THAT'S THE LARGEST ARMS IN THE WORLD, JACK! That was a pretty fun way to debut Steiner, too bad his run with WWE would only go downhill from here.  We're getting ready for the main event, as the Chamber gets lowered around the ring. The Chamber-lowering music is the same track they use for cage matches and sounds like something off the Mass Effect 1 soundtrack, which is great because Mass Effect 1 rules (aside from the inventory and reused assets) and now I want to play it again. Err, where was I? The writeup for the Chamber match is pretty long (longer than the entirety of this post, actually), so I'll put that in a separate update a little bit later. DMorbid fucked around with this message at 01:05 on Nov 24, 2020 |
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Mar 29, 2020 02:30
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Let's Watch Survivor Series 2002, Part Three Terri Runnels interviews Shawn Michaels backstage and asks Shawn why he believes he will win the World Heavyweight title. Before Shawn can answer, we're interrupted by an RNN Breaking News update.  Orton is still out with a shoulder injury, and recently we've been getting these RNN updates on his condition. Randy was a bland babyface when he got injured, and these segments are being used to turn him heel so he can eventually join up with Triple H and Ric Flair. I'm not a fan of Orton in the slightest, but even I have to admit he's pretty great in these vignettes as this smarmy jackass heel who thinks he's a babyface. Anyway, we never do get to hear why Shawn thinks he's going to win the title tonight, because it's time for the first ever Elimination Chamber match!  Well, maybe not quite yet, because first we have another promo package to sit through as Eric Bischoff tells us some more about how great he is and "Always" plays once more. You know, while this song is in the upper tier of buttrock PPV themes, maybe we don't need to hear the entire thing (well, almost, since they've edited it a little for this package) again, especially since we've already seen most of this video package earlier in the show.  Jonathan Coachman interviews Triple H backstage. Ric Flair is there too, but doesn't say anything. In September, HHH was awarded the World Heavyweight Championship by Eric Bischoff after the cross-brand Undisputed Championship became the Smackdown-exclusive WWE Championship. No tournament or anything, Bischoff just gave it to him. Why? "Because I'm the best," says HHH. He's beat everyone and all that stuff, but now he feels he's put into a lovely position because people are jealous of him. Tonight, inside the Elimination Chamber, he will go up against "five of the very best ever in this business." Wait a second, he didn't call them loser geeks or try to bury them at all! Who is this guy and what has he done to Triple H? HHH says he's going to walk out of the Madison Square Garden as the champion, because he's that drat good. But for right now, he's got a first class ticket to hell and he wants to know who's coming with him. Not gonna lie, that was actually a great promo by HHH. It was short, to the point, he didn't bury his opponents, and he even said something kinda cool at the end.  Eric Bischoff comes out to explain the rules of the Elimination Chamber match and put over how dangerous it is. You know how this works, so I'm not going to go to detail about the rules. Let's get on with the match!  Our first entrant is the living legend, the huge rockstar, the King of the World, one of the World Tag Team Champions (with Christian), and whatever else he was calling himself at this point - Chris Jericho. This is not just your usual Jericho entrance, because he's being played to the ring by Saliva. The band performs "King of My World" live at The World, which is kind of neat even though the song itself is nothing to write home about. Like I said, Jericho was going around calling himself the KING OF THE WORLD, YOU SON OF A BITCH at this time, and I guess WWE decided to lean into that and hired Saliva to record a new theme to replace "Break Down the Walls". This new theme, which was still composed by Jim Johnston, was used maybe twice and Jericho went right back to the old theme. Honestly, this theme isn't that great. It's kind of a boring dirge that doesn't suit Jericho's character as a loud and obnoxious wannabe rock star all that well. I don't like "Break Down the Walls" either because Jericho is an old school rock and metal guy and that song doesn't have that kind of vibe at all. It does at least have more energy than the Saliva song, which is nice. WWE would later try to replace Jericho's theme song again in 2004, when the ill-advised WWE Originals album came out and Jericho's song from that album was briefly used as his entrance music. That song by Jericho's band Fozzy was called "Don't You Wish You Were Me?" and was at least catchier than "King of My World" and better suited to Jericho's character, but it didn't last either. Of course, as we all know, Jericho has since found the perfect entrance theme.  (Personally, in the pre- days I always wished he'd use "Trumpets of Jericho" from Bruce Dickinson's The Chemical Wedding album) That goatee rules, by the way. My social distancing beard isn't quite that impressive yet, but maybe I'll get there one day. Jericho enters his pod and just stands there for the next couple of minutes or so as Saliva keeps playing the song. I don't know, I think they probably should've workshopped this entrance a little bit more. At least Saliva didn't play the full 4-minute version and instead opted to finish the song around the 2:40 mark.  Booker T is next to enter. He's here mostly to make up the numbers and nobody thinks he's actually going to win.  Next up, the Big Red Machine. I quite liked this mask design, although nothing beats the original gear (or the version with the black and red inverted) for me.  Shawn Michaels is next. Earlier in the year, Michaels returned to the ring after a four-year absence caused by the back injury he suffered at Royal Rumble 1998. He was initially brought back as a member of the nWo, but after that didn't work out he transitioned into a storyline with his old buddy Triple H. HHH pretended to reform D-Generation X with Shawn on an episode of RAW but ended up betraying and attacking Shawn, even putting his head through a limo window one week. This led to Shawn's big comeback match against HHH at Summerslam, and what an amazing match that was. Seriously, that match rules. Shawn hadn't lost a step, and the crowd went crazy for everything he did. Anyway, Shawn won that match but got attacked by HHH immediately afterward, as HHH hit him twice in the back with a sledgehammer. In the storyline, this brutal and cowardly attack by HHH put Shawn on the shelf for months and the next time he appeared, he was in a wheelchair. However, this was just a ruse, as the Heartbreak Kid jumped out of his wheelchair during a promo on RAW. The following week, during HHH's casket match with Kane (yes, this was the blowoff to the Katie Vick angle), Shawn jumped out of the casket and superkicked HHH to properly reignite the feud. This was very well timed, by the way, because if Shawn had not come back at that point I would have quit watching wrestling because of the Katie Vick nonsense. As we didn't get RAW in Finland until around September/October 2002 and had no way to order PPVs, I had only seen Shawn in video games by that point, but he'd always been my favorite to play as so I really wanted to see him in action. So, I didn't quit watching wrestling. I also loved Shawn's response to Eric Bischoff about the Katie Vick thing: Bischoff: "Does necrophilia offend your sensibilities as a Christian, Shawn?" Shawn: "No, it offends me as a wrestling fan!" Can't say it much better than that, can you? I should also point out that Michaels is wearing some absolutely hideous gear in this match:  Yeesh. As the story goes, Shawn had meant to wear his old-school HBK gear, but there was a luggage mishap or something to that effect and he didn't have the gear when he arrived at the arena. This lovely little number was the best the costume department could whip up on short notice, and he's also wearing his cowboy boots to the ring. I've spent way too much time staring at Shawn Michaels' rear end during this match to figure out what's going on with the design on the back. It's a white S and a blue M inside a heart shape, but if you look at it from a distance and don't notice the letters or focus on the negative space it kinda looks like an image of two women in front of a blue background!  Then it's time to introduce the guys who will start the match. First off, we've got Rob Van Dam, Mr. Monday Night himself. RVD's high flying skills and innovative offense should be a great asset inside the Elimination Chamber, and suffice to say we'll see some great stuff from him in this match.  Finally, we've got the World Heavyweight Champion. The Cerebral rear end Game Assassin Kicker, or whatever he calls himself this week. While Bischoff is the one who created the Elimination Chamber match in storyline, Triple H is the one who actually came up with it because he wanted to do something like War Games. So, who better to start the first ever Chamber match? Now that we've finally got all the competitors in the ring, let's actually get this match started. RVD has the advantage early on, attacking HHH with his kicks. Educated feet, and all that stuff. HHH fights back and goes for the Pedigree early, but gets backdropped out of the ring and lands hard on the steel floor. That looks and sounds super painful, no padding out there yet. HHH gets whipped face first into the chains that make up the Chamber walls, and he's already busted open. RVD monkeyflips HHH onto the steel and follows up with the Rolling Thunder over the ropes.  HHH is taking a beating here. RVD climbs up the wall and gets on top of Jericho's pod, flipping him off along the way. Jericho takes offense to this and grabs RVD's leg to allow HHH to get to him, but RVD knocks HHH back down to the floor. Rolling senton off the turnbuckle and onto HHH, although RVD whiffs most of that and lands hard on the floor. That looked like it hurt like hell. RVD eventually gets back up and continues beating on HHH, who hasn't gotten any offense in the first five minutes of this match. Five minutes also means the next pod is about to open, and Jericho enters the fray. Jericho runs into a spinning kick by RVD, who follows up with a moonsault. RVD is still in control here. RVD climbs to the top rope and tries to dive on Jericho on the outside, but Jericho dodges and RVD grabs the chamber wall instead, then launches himself at Jericho.  So far, RVD is easily the MVP of this match. HHH finally gets some offense in by clotheslining RVD, but immediately falls on his rear end in a comical fashion. Jericho suplexes RVD and goes for the cocky pin, which I will always mark out for. COME ON BABY! Jericho hits a senton on RVD for a two count, and now HHH and Jericho start to work together as Jericho also decides to do some crotch chops in front of Michaels' pod. Jericho informs us he is the King of the World as he and HHH keep beating on RVD, bouncing him off the chamber wall. More double team offense from the heels, but RVD fights back. This comeback is cut short, however, as HHH hits him with a big DDT.  I love Van Dam's DDT sell, it's always fantastic. Another five minutes have passed, and Booker T enters the ring. Booker cleans house and sends the heels to the outside before turning his attention to RVD. The two respect each other, but this is every man for himself so they fight for a bit until HHH gets back inside. HHH eats a scissors kick from Booker, but Jericho attacks from behind before Booker can capitalize. RVD takes Jericho out, and HHH is dead on the canvas. RVD leaps to the top turnbuckle and then climbs up to the pod, motioning for the Five-Star Frog Splash...  Holy poo poo! RVD's knee lands right on Triple H's throat, causing a legit injury. HHH immediately looks like something's horribly wrong. Referee Earl Hebner checks on him, but HHH is able to continue the match despite the swelling on the inside of his throat. RVD basically took himself out of the match with that dive off the pod, so Booker T hits RVD with a missile dropkick off the top and pins him. RVD is the first man eliminated, and the crowd reacts with enormous boos. Booker then attempts to pin HHH, but Earl Hebner is too busy rolling RVD out of the ring to react and HHH manages to get a foot on the bottom rope anyway. I didn't realize there were rope breaks in the Elimination Chamber, but there you go. Jericho misses the Lionsault, as he so often does, and lands on his feet but eats a spinebuster from Booker. The next pod opens, and Kane makes his way into the ring. Kane clobbers Booker and Jericho for a while, as HHH is still down. Kane tosses Jericho to the floor and rams his face into the wall lawn dart style before throwing him through the plexiglass on one of the pods.  That looked brutal. The plexiglass shatters spectacularly and makes an equally spectacular noise as Jericho hits it. Jericho's now busted open, but somehow he's not completely dead yet and manages to make his way back up to hit a low blow on Booker, which is followed by a chokeslam by Kane. Jericho connects with the Lionsault on Booker, who becomes the second man to be eliminated. Jericho now fights for his life against Kane, with predictable results as he gets tossed around the ring and its general vicinity. Kane misses an elbow drop and Jericho gets back on the offense, as HHH climbs the turnbuckle but gets thrown off by Kane. Honestly, at this point I would not blame Triple H at all if he just stayed down until he was absolutely needed, but there he is. The crowd starts chanting HBK as the countdown begins again, and Michaels enters the match. Shawn comes in and attacks everything that moves, but runs into a clothesline from Kane. Michaels takes Kane down with a forearm smash, and you can clearly hear someone shout "YOU SUCK, SHAWN!" as they're getting up. I think that was someone in the crowd, it didn't sound like any of the wrestlers in the ring. Shawn eats a chokeslam from Kane, and so does Triple H. Chokeslam to Jericho as well, and now Kane is the only man still on his feet. Kane goes for a Tombstone on HHH, but Shawn kicks his face in with Sweet Chin Music. Kane sits up, but HHH gets him with the Pedigree and Jericho follows up with another Lionsault. Jericho pins Kane and gets his second elimination of the night. Jericho goes straight for Michaels and beats him up on the outside, and Michaels is now in a bad way because the heels have joined forces again. Jericho and HHH are trying to make Shawn bleed, and eventually succeed in their attempt. King says this is like a prison. No, it's worse than being in prison, it's worse than Oz! Hey, a timely pop culture reference for 2002. Somewhere in the back, Vince scratches his head and wonders why Lawler would bring up that old movie about the wizard. Jericho continues beating on Shawn and talking trash. Michaels fights back and sends Jericho face-first into the wall, goes for a piledriver on the steel but Jericho backdrops Michaels on the floor. That sound is just gnarly. Shawn and HHH now fight each other and both are knocked down, until Shawn does the kipup to loud cheers, only for Jericho to attack him from behind and land another Lionsault. Shawn kicks out, and Jericho can't believe it. Moonsault press from Shawn gets another two count, and now Shawn has Jericho locked in the Walls until HHH DDTs him. Jericho covers Shawn, but HHH pulls him off, and now the "two egomaniacs" as JR calls them are fighting each other. Flying nothing by Jericho, straight into the Pedigree position but Jericho counters into ther Walls. HHH gets to the ropes but Jericho pulls him back to the middle. HHH looks ready to tap, but Michaels comes out of nowhere with a Sweet Chin Music to Jericho. Shawn eliminates Jericho, and now it's down to Michaels and Triple H. Spinebuster by HHH gets a two count. I'm actually surprised JR is not making a bigger deal about Michaels' back injury in this match, at least until HHH backdrops Shawn onto the steel. Michaels goes for a Pedigree on the outside, but gets countered and slingshotted through one of the pods. That broke in a much cleaner way than the pod Jericho went through, but that hardly matters because Michaels looks completely out of it.  At this point, JR and King are starting to think this is just a formality now, with King in particular saying it's over for Shawn, he's done for. HHH rolls Michaels inside the ring and goes for the cover, but Shawn kicks out. HHH isn't done yet and continues the assault, as King tries to convince JR he should just give up all hope of Shawn surviving this. Shawn is still fighting, though, hitting HHH with right hands, but runs into a facebuster and gets thrown to the outside again. Now it's HHH going for the Pedigree on the steel, but Michaels counters and sends HHH into the wall. Both men are half dead at this point, but Shawn finds enough fighting spirit to climb on top of one of the pods...  Jesus! Shawn decides not to go for the cover, choosing instead to tune up the band. Michaels goes for the Sweet Chin Music but HHH counters and hits the Pedigree. HHH is unable to make the cover until several seconds later, and even then he only barely gets one arm on top of Michaels. Because we're not at Wrestlemania XIX and Shawn Michaels is not Booker T, Michaels kicks out and the crowd goes nuts again. Both men stagger up, HHH goes for another Pedigree but gets countered, SWEET CHIN MUSIC and Shawn Michaels wins the World Heavyweight Championship!  As JR is screaming himself hoarse about miracles coming true, a visibly emotional Shawn mouths "thank you" to the ecstatic crowd amid a shower of confetti to close out the show. This would be Shawn's only world title win in the second half of his career, and he'd only hold the belt for a month until dropping it back to Triple H (their feud would go on and on for the next couple of years and they'd face each other again several times, with diminishing returns), but what a moment. What a match. Exciting action and innovative use of the Chamber, great story, satisfying finish, just a great match all around. I originally gave the match five stars, but after some more consideration I'll drop it to four and a half. Booker T served no purpose in the story of the match (aside from eliminating RVD, which could've just as easily been done by Jericho) and might as well not have been in there at all, and the RVD botch was pretty nasty and could've injured HHH much worse than it already did. Still, these guys set the bar extremely high with the first Chamber match, and I don't know if it's ever been topped. I should rewatch some of the later ones to be sure, but the fact is they nailed it with this one. ****˝ My overall grade for Survivor Series 2002 is an A-. There's not a single bad match on the show, even the Brock vs. Big Show match served its purpose and didn't outstay its welcome. The Smackdown tag title match and the Chamber match were both an absolute joy to watch, and I'm glad to say this show has held up incredibly well since my last viewing many years ago. Hell, I might have enjoyed it more this time around. The only reason this show doesn't get a full A from me is that we probably didn't need to see two lengthy video packages set to Saliva's "Always", especially when they also performed before the main event. Even if you're a fan of Saliva (those probably exist somewhere, maybe), you'll have to admit that was entirely too much Saliva for one night and that time could've been put to better use elsewhere on the card. But aside from that and Jerry Lawler's cringeworthy commentary on the women's match, this show was as good as it gets. Next time... hm. I'm not actually sure what we should do next time. Anyone got any particular shows they'd like to see tackled next? Any more comments about Survivor Series 2002 you'd like to share?
DMorbid fucked around with this message at 20:50 on Mar 29, 2020 |
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Mar 29, 2020 16:59
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Yeah, there's been a couple of Survivor Series shows without Survivor Series matches because they were promoting some other gimmick. 2002 was the Elimination Chamber, and 1998 had the Deadly Game tournament for the vacant world title.
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Mar 29, 2020 20:58
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Let's Watch WWF In Your House: Canadian Stampede (Jul 06, 1997) This show was recommended to me on the Wrestlehut Discord channel. I was told it's got a biased Canadian crowd, it's only two hours long as was the case with all In Your House PPVs, there are no filler matches, and The Great Sasuke is on the show. Sold! I'm pretty sure I've seen Brian Zane's review of this show on YouTube before, but I don't remember any specifics from it so any similarities between that review and this one are purely coincidental. In general, 1997 is a period in WWF/E's history I'm not super familiar with except for the really big stuff like Mania XIII or the Montreal Screwjob. This means that unlike Survivor Series 2002 last time, I won't be able to tell you all the backstory leading up to the matches aside from what they show in hype packages or mention on commentary. With all that out of the way, let's start the show!  We start with a promo package hyping up the Bret Hart/Steve Austin feud and the Hart Foundation, talking about how things are no longer black and white in the World Wrestling Federation. Tonight in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, the villains will be the heroes and vice versa! Indeed, the Hart Foundation are megaheels in the US, but tonight we're on their home turf and Austin and co. are going to get booed out of the building.  Stampeding Canadians can be very dangerous, I'm told, even though they are usually polite about it. Vince McMahon, Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler welcome us to the show, all wearing cowboy hats to fit the whole cowboy theme.  JR puts over how good The Great Sasuke is, and Vince and King hype up the Triple H vs. Mankind match. Oh, and speaking of which, there's Hunter Hearst Helmsley.  HHH and Mankind fought in the King of the Ring final a month before, with Hunter coming out on top and becoming the 1997 King of the Ring after some assistance from Chyna, who I believe had only recently debuted for the company. Mankind has been feuding with the two of them for the last month, and here's the grudge match. Foley and HHH always worked well together, so this should be a good time.  Mankind's still wearing his original brown gear, but judging from the video package before the match his character has already been somewhat humanized and isn't nearly as creepy as he used to be, as they're acknowledging him as Mick Foley instead of the tortured freak that was the original Mankind character. Original Mankind is still creepy as gently caress because Foley sold the hell out of a character that probably should've been ridiculous. Mankind and HHH immediately start beating the everliving poo poo out of each other. Double Arm DDT almost immediately, and Mankind does HHH's blueblood taunt. That was pretty fun. Cactus Elbow to the outside and BANG BANG, as JR brings up Mankind's Cactus Jack days. HHH heads to the ramp in an attempt to get counted out, but Mankind suplexes him on the ramp. Mankind does the whole rocking back and forth thing as he waits for HHH to get back in the ring, as JR describes him as the Prime Minister of Parts Unknown. What is the political structure of Parts Unknown, and how does the Ultimate Warrior fit into it? Mankind has HHH in the Mandible Claw, but Chyna interrupts and saves HHH's rear end. Mankind goes after Chyna as HHH tries to attack from behind, but Mankind is ready for it. HHH whips Mankind towards Chyna and HOLY poo poo   Jesus! Chyna powerslams Mankind onto the steps and he lands calves first on the edge without any way to really protect himself. That looked painful as gently caress, and this is not the first or last time Foley has taken this bump. Chyna distracts the ref as HHH clobbers Mankind with a chair, and now the Connecticut Blueblood is in control. HHH continues working the leg as JR puts over how "cerebral" he is. Heh. HHH keeps pummeling Mankind, who is still selling the leg injury. HHH locks in the Figure Four, but Mankind refuses to give up. HHH holds onto the ropes to gain leverage, so the ref straight-up kicks him away from the ropes and forces him to break the hold. Mankind is back on the attack, but HHH goes for the Pedigree. Mankind counters but HHH kicks him into the corner, and Mankind falls head first onto HHH's groin. Mankind's on the attack once again and now HHH is in trouble as Mankind's hitting him with everything he's got, including the piledriver in the middle of the ring. Mankind clotheslines HHH and himself out of the ring, which JR describes as two cars colliding and people being ejected from the seats. Mankind gets a chair but Chyna stops him and distracts the ref to allow HHH to get another chairshot in. The ref stops HHH from hitting Mankind with the chair again, but now Chyna clotheslines Mankind and Mankind's down again. Mankind's "getting it from both ends", as Vince describes it. HHH gets crotched on the top rope and Mankind applies the Mandible Claw again, but Chyna pulls him groin-first into the ringpost. More brawling on the outside, HHH tosses Mankind over the barricade and the ref counts both of them out. Mankind throws HHH into the penalty box (this is the home of the Calgary Flames, after all), and Chyna's getting in there as well. HHH and Mankind keep brawling in the crowd and referees come to break it up. Tim White gets thrown right to the floor by HHH. Poor guy. The officials eventually break up the fight, and that's the end of the match. I'll give this one three stars out of five. It's got some nice action, and Foley and HHH have good chemistry in the ring, but I didn't care for the countout ending and the match seemed to end just as it was about to get going. Still, both guys look strong in the end, and it was an enjoyable match to start off the PPV. *** We see a video package about a fan event in Calgary leading up to the show, talking about parades and massive lines for Bret Hart's autograph and that sort of thing. After the video, Dok Hendrix interviews Bret and the Foundation backstage but Bret only gets a few words in before Steve Austin interrupts. Austin gets escorted out by Pat Patterson and a couple of other backstage officials, and Bret says there's no reason to beat Austin up now because that'd only mean Austin got beaten 5-on-1. The Foundation wants 5-on-5 and that's how they'll get the job done. TAKA Michinoku's theme plays, and this is going to be good.  Sadly, this version of TAKA's theme song doesn't have the "TAKA IS COMING, MOTHERFUCKER" or even the "gently caress YOU" stinger, but it's still awesome and one of the best themes ever. JR puts over his talent and completely butchers the pronunciation on "Michinoku" as something more akin to "Mitchinoukou". Sadly, Twitter hasn't been invented yet so nobody can put over TAKA's amazing social media skills. Howard Finkel, also wearing a cowboy hat tonight, announces TAKA as hailing "from Japan" because of course he does.  "Also hailing from Japan", it's The Great Sasuke. Nobody in Japan actually has a hometown, you know. Now, I actually thought this was going to be a six-man tag match featuring Kaientai and Dick Togo in an Iron Maiden shirt, but I must be thinking of some other show (ECW Barely Legal? I could've sworn it was a WWF show from around this time, though) because this is just TAKA going up against Sasuke for the Light Heavyweight title. Before the match can start, we cut to Mankind and HHH still beating each other up on the arena floor. Hunter is busted open as the fight continues, and eventually they're out of sight and the actual match in the ring can start. Someone in the crowd has a "THIS IS WORKRATE" sign. It certainly is, buddy. To me, "workrate" was always one of those internet fan buzzwords that seemed to mean different things to everyone who used it, eventually becoming completely meaningless and largely used by WWE fanboys to complain about those terrible smarks who only care about workrate. JR again does his best to put over both competitors, talking about their background and title wins. King brings up the infamous Antonio Inoki vs. Muhammad Ali match, and JR talks fondly about the original Tiger Mask. One of these things is not like the others. The match starts slowly with some holds and the crowd seems a bit restless and quiet, but I'm sure that won't last too long. TAKA runs into a spinning kick and Sasuke goes for an elevated half crab, but TAKA gets to the ropes. TAKA gets the advantage with some strikes, and now Sasuke is down and the crowd starts to get into it. TAKA gets thrown out of the ring, Sasuke up top and lands a "martial arts kick" (if you're anything like me, you are now hearing the "MARTIAL ARTS KICK! MARTIAL ARTS KICK!" voice clip from Smackdown: Just Bring It in your head) on TAKA. Both men back in the ring, Sasuke lands some stiff kicks and TAKA is down. TAKA drops Sasuke with a dragon screw and continues working on the leg, then hits a massive springboard dive that ends with both men on the ramp.  Someone's brought a "WCW - where the GAY boys play" sign that is being displayed prominently on camera as TAKA gets up. I bet that fan was very proud of his veritable wellspring of creativity and razor-sharp wit, and Vince probably found it hilarious. But that's enough about idiots in the crowd and behind the announce desk, because this really cool match continues and both guys make their way back into the ring. German Suplex but TAKA lands on his feet and hits a rana on Sasuke for a two count. La Magistral for another two count. Handspring elbow by Sasuke sends TAKA to the outside and Sasuke follows up with an Asai moonsault. I get the feeling Vince doesn't know what to make of any of this. Both guys back in the ring again, TAKA with a belly to belly suplex, gets another two count. Springboard missile dropkick by TAKA and Sasuke is down again. MICHINOKU DRIVER and that should be it... no, Sasuke kicks out! I genuinely thought that was gonna be it. TAKA goes up top again as we see a replay of the Michinoku Driver. Holy poo poo, TAKA planted him. Look at this.  TAKA gets kicked by Sasuke in midair as the camera almost completely misses it, and Sasuke follows up with a second rope springboard moonsault press. Another nearfall, and Sasuke hits a stiff Thunder Fire Powerbomb. Tiger Suplex by Sasuke for the three count, as the crowd completely nosells the finish. I'm not sure why because they were hot for everything leading up to it. That was a bit weird. It would've been nice if these two got more time because they really could've brought the house down, but even as it is this was an awesome showcase of that 90s Japanese junior heavyweight action that was so far ahead of its time. You could still put this match on pretty much any card and it'd still be good. Again, it suffers a bit from the lack of time as well as the abrupt finish where the crowd seemed to be totally asleep, but I'll give this match a very respectable four stars out of five. **** If WWF had kept bringing in the Japanese junior heavyweights and just let them do their thing like this, they would've had an excellent answer to WCW's cruiserweight division. Of course, this being WWF, they didn't do anything interesting with the Light Heavyweight division after 1997 and eventually retired the belt for over a year after it had been won by Gillberg. It was brought back in 2000 and won by people such as Dean Malenko and Jerry Lynn, and of course X-Pac who was the last Light Heavyweight champion before the belt was retired for good.Mankind and HHH are now fighting outside in the parking lot as Gerald Brisco and others make futile attempts to separate them. HHH goes to Pedigree Mankind on top of some wooden pallets, but gets backdropped onto them instead and the fight continues until the officials finally manage to break it up. Ahmed Johnson was apparently going to face the Undertaker for the WWF Championship on this show, but got injured and replaced by Vader. Dok Hendrix interviews Paul Bearer and Vader (mostly Bearer, as Vader just makes various grunting noises) backstage, as Bearer accuses Undertaker of murdering his own family. Hmm. I wonder what this might be building up to. He also says looking in the mirror is the best thing he does every morning, "if you know what I mean." No, I don't know what you mean, Paul. Paul Bearer looks weird with his natural hair color and no mustache, by the way.  Bearer says Vader's gonna whip Taker just like he did at the Royal Rumble and leave with the title. We then see how Vader beat Taker at the Royal Rumble after Bearer betrayed Taker and hit him with the urn, and after that it's TIME! IT'S TIME! IT'S VADER TIME! Vader really deserved better in WWF than he got. Rest in peace, big man.  This 1997-98 version of the Undertaker was always my favorite. His gear looked really cool. Meanwhile, Paul Bearer continues to be great:  The match starts and Taker starts throwing those ham hocks at the mastodon. Taker goes for a quick cover and Tim White seems to count to three, but I think the first thud on the mat you hear is just him dropping down and it just sounds like he actually counts to three. Some refs would do that and it always irked me. Vince talks about Undertaker's brother possibly being alive, as Bearer continues to ham it up on the outside. Taker hits the rope walk clothesline for a two count as JR talks about how only someone like Vader who dominated the Japanese wrestling scene could kick out of that. Please don't remind me of NJPW Vader matches during a WWF Vader match, it's depressing. Vader's got Taker in a headlock, but Taker gets free, only to get knocked down by a Vader shoulderblock. Big boot by Taker but Vader stays upright, another big boot sends him to the outside. Vader sends Taker knees-first into the steps, and Paul Bearer gets in Taker's face to loudly taunt him about being a murderer. Taker hits a top rope clothesline on Vader for another two count. JR reminds us how Vader used to be called Baby Bull early in his career. Baby Bull!  Vader displays some less baby bull-like tendencies as he clobbers Taker on the outside. Bearer hits Taker with one of his shoes and again yells "MURDERER!" I think we've established that, Paul.Vader's in control now and goes up to the second rope. Body press on a standing Undertaker for a two count. Bearer yells "THREE THREE THREE DAMMIT THREE, CAN'T YOU COUNT TO THREE?!" and tells one of the fans to shut up. Bearer has been great on this show. Vertical suplex by Vader, nicely done. Standing frog splash for another two count. Vader's slowing things down and has Taker in a hold in the middle of the ring, as the crowd stomps their feet so hard the entire building seems to shake. The camera certainly does. Taker fights out and the crowd goes nuts. Vader's got the advantage once more as the camera shakes again. Taker's got Vader ready for the chokeslam, but Vader kicks him in the balls right in front of the referee. That's gotta be a DQ.  That's as blatant as it gets. However, Tim White does not disqualify Vader. JR wonders why that wasn't a DQ, and I agree with him on that one. Sure, judgement call and all that, but that was as blatant a low blow as you can possibly get and would be a DQ in any other match. Undertaker goes for the Tombstone, Vader tries to reverse to a Tombstone position of his own but falls over and Taker covers him for another two count. That looked a bit botchy. Vader is back on the attack and Taker's down as the building appears to shake again. The ring ropes are actually shaking as well, so it's not just the camera moving up and down. Vader goes up for the Vaderbomb, but Taker sits up behind his back and hits another blatant low blow the ref also allows. I guess now we know why the first one was allowed, because now Taker can get revenge without getting disqualified. Chokeslam from the second rope, and this is over... wait, no? Okay then. Vader kicks out, so Taker hits him with another chokeslam. Surely that'll be... huh. Another kickout. At least they're making Vader look strong here. Vader runs straight into a Tombstone, and that'll be that. Undertaker retains the title.  This was a fun hoss fight. Nothing fancy, but both guys got to do some impressive stuff and Vader looked like a monster despite losing. The lack of punishment for the blatant low blows was a bit weird, because even though I realize the first one was ignored just so Taker could later get his revenge, why would Tim White allow a straight-up dick kick in the first place? Just seems a bit weird to me. In any case, that was a pretty solid three stars out of five. *** More footage of the Harts and the activities leading up to the show, and some of the action we've seen on RAW lately. Exciting! We also get a recap of how the Austin/Hart feud got to this point, and then it's time for Dok Hendrix to interview Austin's team.  Dok Hendrix talks about how the team might actually be going into the match as underdogs, and they're already getting plenty of boos from the Canadian crowd. Holy poo poo, Animal and Hawk, settle down. Stone Cold says nothing. Here to sing the Canadian National Anthem, from Vancouver, British Columbia, Universal recording artists Farmer's Daughter!  No, I've never heard of them either. The crowd goes nuts for them, though.Howard Finkel introduces the Premier of Alberta and Stu & Helen Hart, who are in the front row. Goldust enters (sans Marlena, who is at home taking care of baby Dakota), and receives thunderous boos. Boos for Ken Shamrock as well.  Well, looks like we've got some folks here who don't care for the Harts and aren't afraid to show it. I hope these ladies didn't get yelled at by a bunch of weird wrestling nerds.  The LOD get a cold reception as well, but nothing compared to Stone Cold who is the biggest heel in the building tonight.There are a couple of Austin signs in the crowd, but the reception is almost as if Roman Reigns just wandered in. Brian Pillman is the first Foundation member to enter, and the crowd goes apeshit. Next up is Jim Neidhart, same deal. Davey Boy Smith comes out with Diana Smith, again to a huge ovation. Nothing compared to what we're about to hear, though. First off, it's Slammy winner and IC Champion Owen Hart. The fans love him, of course, but we all know who they came to see. There's that famous guitar wail, and the Hitman is here!  This might be one of the biggest crowd pops I have ever heard. Bret gives the shades to his mother.  JR mentions there is a documentary crew filming this. That'll be awkward a few months later, that's for sure. Bret and Austin start the match by unloading on each other, and Bret gets the advantage. The announcers actually shut up for the opening sequence to let the crowd noise come across, and describe how the building is shaking. The crowd goes ballistic for everything Bret does, and Austin is still the most hated person in the building. Austin with the cobra clutch, Bret's shoulders are down but Bret kicks out and gets the advantage back. Neidhart is tagged in and begins to work on Austin, but gets taken down with the Lou Thesz Press and Shamrock enters. Someone in the crowd is walking back and forth with a "WHAT'S KAYFABE" sign (I think this is what one would call "trying to get yourself over") as Shamrock gets the ankle lock on Neidhart, which is broken up by Pillman. Pillman is tagged in and takes Shamrock down, but eats some punches and a belly to belly suplex. Owen and Goldust now get tagged in, and the crowd goes crazy for Owen. Enzuigiri to the back of Goldust's head for a two count. Loud "AUSTIN SUCKS" chant as Goldust tags Hawk in. Hawk tosses Owen around and goes up top, splash for a two count. Hawk misses a dropkick and Owen locks him in the Sharpshooter, but Animal interrupts. Bulldog comes in and drops Hawk with a stalling vertical suplex and the running powerslam, Goldust breaks the count. Bret and Animal are now the legal men, Animal backs off and tags Goldust back in. Goldust gets put in a tree of woe position in the Hart corner and everyone beats the poo poo out of him, as trash starts flying to the ring. Owen and Goldust are the legal men now, and Owen runs into the ringpost. Animal pummels him for a bit but eats a spinning heel kick, Owen goes up top and hits a front dropkick, followed by a kipup that again sends the fans into a frenzy. Owen goes for a hurricanrana but Animal drops him with a powerbomb. LOD go for the Doomsday Device and hit it, but Neidhart breaks up the count. Everyone's beating each other up again, and Austin gets popcorn and other crap thrown at him. Austin wraps Owen's leg around the ringpost and whacks it with a chair, only to get attacked by Bruce Hart in the front row. Bret's got the chair now, but instead of hitting Austin he checks on his brother. Owen is hurt, so he is taken back to his corner and it seems he's now being taken to the back by referees. The remaining Foundation members beat up Austin in the corner, but Austin fights back and drags Pillman from the tights, and Pillman is now quite literally showing rear end. Austin fights off the Foundation, but gets his bad knee whacked into the ringpost multiple times by Bret, then hits it again with a fire extinguisher. The audio on the Network gets muted for several seconds, so presumably Austin said something naughty. Bret puts Austin in the Figure Four around the ringpost, and now Austin's leg is hosed. Referees show up to take Austin to the back, but I don't think he's gonna go quietly. Meanwhile, the action continues in the ring as Bulldog and Neidhart work on Hawk. Austin is now walking to the back with the referees, earning himself another loud chorus of boos. Anvil and Animal have a test of strength in the middle of the ring, Bret is tagged in, Hart Attack to Animal who kicks out easily because gently caress selling, we're the Road Warriors. Shamrock is tagged in and Bret headbutts him in the "lower abdomen, very low" before Shamrock sends him face first into the turnbuckle. Shamrock allows Bret to get up and assumes a fighting stance, but Bret outwrestles him and Shamrock gets tossed to the floor where Pillman sends him crashing into the Spanish announcers' table. All hell is breaking loose, Vince says as I type the exact same thing. Bret hits Shamrock with the Russian leg sweep but Goldust breaks up the pin, Bulldog and Shamrock are now the legal men and Bulldog beats the poo poo out of Shamrock. Low blow by Shamrock, Goldust comes in and hits, well, a bulldog on Bulldog. Goldust gets crotched on the top rope by Bulldog, followed by a big superplex off the top!  Austin's back, and now his team has the 5-on-4 advantage again. Bret and Austin go at it again, and this time Austin has the advantage until Bret hits a neckbreaker and follows up with the backbreaker. Diving elbow, two count. Bret applies a sleeper hold which is countered into... hm, that looked almost like a Stunner but nobody's calling it that and Bret kicks out easily at two. Sharpshooter! Animal breaks up the submission by clotheslining Bret, and now Austin's got Bret in the Sharpshooter but Owen runs in and saves his brother!  Owen now working over Austin, but gets clotheslined to the floor and beaten up on the outside. Austin now gets into it with the whole Hart Family in the front row, and as he returns to the ring he gets rolled up by Owen. One, two and three, and the match is over, but the chaos has only just begun because now all the Hart brothers are in there and we've got officials, security, referees down, it's absolute mayhem in there. JR even suggests a fan might have gotten in the ring, but I think he was just selling how crazy the situation was. Eventually, the chaos is broken up by a small army of officials. The Harts celebrate in the ring, but Austin slides back in with a chair and attacks them, only to get pummeled by everyone. Austin gets handcuffed by security as he shouts and spits and curses at everything in his general vicinity and is escorted out as he flips off the crowd with his hands still cuffed. Austin gets to look like a badass despite losing, but it's safe to say almost no one in this crowd gives a poo poo about what Austin might look like after that match.  Now that Austin's been removed from the premises the Harts can celebrate again, and even Stu and Helen get brought in to the ring along with their grandkids. That seems to be the entire Hart family in the ring now. I don't think I need to describe the crowd response to all this. That was pretty amazing, not gonna lie. The match itself wasn't really all that special, but the atmosphere was, as was pointed out on commentary quite a few times, electrifying. The entire building was basically shaking the whole match! Looking at this match and seeing the family celebration nearly 23 years later is very bittersweet, because we all know what has happened to the Harts since then and what horrible tragedies they've had to endure over the years, starting with the death of Brian Pillman only a few months after this. But on this night in Calgary, the Harts were the conquering heroes, totally invincible. I give this main event five stars, not for the match itself but everything surrounding it. ***** My overall grade for Canadian Stampede is an A-. Had the light heavyweight match gotten more time and the opener not ended in a double countout finish, this would be very close to full A territory. Quite possibly the best In Your House PPV I've seen. There are IYH shows with better matches for sure, but those also have terrible undercards and this was solid from top to bottom. Maybe next time I'll watch something that doesn't get an A-. 
DMorbid fucked around with this message at 00:16 on Apr 1, 2020 |
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Mar 31, 2020 23:14
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El Gallinero Gros posted:Glad you enjoyed my recommendation ...Just, uh, maybe don't quote the entire huge post?
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Mar 31, 2020 23:46
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is pepsi ok posted:Apparently there's a Juventud Guerrera match? I seriously had no idea he ever wrestled for WWE. I'm not gonna spoil the gimmick they gave him, though.
DMorbid fucked around with this message at 01:35 on Apr 1, 2020 |
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Apr 1, 2020 01:28
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The PPVs don't have to be WWE, by the way. WCW, ECW and, hell, TNA are fine as well if you've got some way to watch them! I won't say no to major Japanese shows either so if you want to do something like early Wrestle Kingdom shows, go right ahead. Hell, technically Heroes of Wrestling is eligible, although that is really stretching the definition of "classic". The thread should probably have been named "Let's Watch Old PPVs" because again, they don't necessarily have to be good shows.
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Apr 1, 2020 01:47
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El Gallinero Gros posted:I put it a new challenge in discord.  So, as it turns out, my next review will be ECW December to Dismember 2006. This show will not receive an A-.
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Apr 1, 2020 02:05
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Let's Watch ECW December to Dismember 2006 (Dec 03, 2006), Part One of Roughly Fifty-SixMax Coveri posted:This show, which took place in the James Brown Arena, was so bad it killed its namesake a few weeks later. Well, I brought this on myself by asking goons to nominate shows and saying they didn't have to be good shows. In the latest installment of Let's Watch Old PPVs, we'll be looking at one of the most infamous PPVs of all time, one widely considered to be among the very worst wrestling shows ever put on. December to loving Dismember 2006. Oh boy.  This is not my first time going through DtD 06. In some ways, that is a blessing because at least, at least I know what's coming and can prepare accordingly. On the other hand, this means I am going to have to watch this utter dreck, this travesty, this wretched excuse for a wrestling show for the second time. Not only that, but I'll also get to recap it for the second time, because back when this garbage aired I actually wrote a recap that has since been lost to the ether. Before we start, let's talk a little bit about the background so I can put this off for slightly longer. Following the successful ECW One Night Stand PPV in 2005, WWE decided to go ahead with a full-on revival of the ECW brand the following year. And hey, if WWE's actual ECW shows had even remotely resembled the One Night Stand shows, even the weaker 2006 edition that kind of served as a pilot for the revival, that would've been fine. Hell, even if it hadn't really felt like classic Extreme Championship Wrestling but were its own thing like NXT is now (more or less), that would ALSO have been fine! However, Vince McMahon couldn't leave the new third brand well enough alone, so he had to put his grubby mitts on the product. Paul Heyman was ostensibly the booker, but Vince had final say on everything. This was a problem from the start and everyone knew it. So, when ECW debuted on the Sci-Fi Channel of all places two days after One Night Stand 2006, we were treated to what would often be derisively called "Extreme Velocity" or "Extreme Heat" in reference to WWE's minor shows nobody cared about (although Velocity at least had good wrestling matches pretty regularly, so it was a decent show). It was very much a traditional WWE show of that era in terms of in-ring action and production, except you had Joey Styles on commentary and there was a hardcore match - or "extreme rules match" as they were called - every so often. All that said, ECW on Sci-Fi wasn't a totally terrible show early in its run. It had a bevy of dumb poo poo like Sandman caning zombies and other weird gimmick characters, yes, but it also usually focused on matches and since ECW's top stars at the time included the likes of Kurt Angle, Rob Van Dam and CM Punk, plus guys like Tommy Dreamer and Sabu falling through tables each week, it was a nice little show. Rob Van Dam was the ECW and WWE Champion, having defeated John Cena at One Night Stand 2006. Then RVD got busted for drug possession and dropped the titles. The ECW belt ended up on the Big Show, the most extreme of wrestlers (to his credit, he did his best to make it work, and Show actually had some fun matches during his run), while RVD got suspended and Angle left the company. It kinda went downhill from there, and that is where December to Dismember 2006 picks up. I guess I'm gonna have to talk about the PPV now, aren't I? I should've gone to bed hours ago but my sleep patterns are all hosed up again, so I'll write this instead. What have I done with my life?  The big main event of December to Dismember is the EXTREME ELIMINATION CHAMBER. It's extreme because the pods have weapons in them. The participants are Big Show, RVD, CM Punk, Sabu, Test (sure, why not) and Bobby Lashley. The fans have gotten behind Punk in the months following his debut at the Hammerstein Ballroom in front of the original ECW faithful, but Lashley has big muscles so you know who Vince wants to push. Joey Styles and Tazz open the show and welcome us to Augusta, Georgia. "Tonight, a new ECW champion will be crowned," says Styles. Thanks for the spoiler, I guess! Off to a great start, and it'll only be downhill from here. Well, not quite, because the opening match is actually not a complete disaster.  MNM are former three-time Smackdown tag champions but have been separated for a while. Joey Mercury aka Joey Matthews is actually an ECW original although that fact is never mentioned anywhere on the show because nobody gives a gently caress, and Johnny Nitro is the future John Morrison/Johnny Mundo/Johnny Impact/etc. I still wish he'd gone to AEW because I was always a fan and wanted to see Johnny Dynamite in action, but at least he's earning that retirement cash in WWE. They're accompanied by Melina, Nitro's real life girlfriend at the time who would eventually become a relatively decent wrestler in the women's division. At this point, she's largely known for screaming a lot and doing the splits on the apron during MNM's entrance.  The Hardys issued an open challenge for December to Dismember, and MNM accepted by attacking them on ECW on Sci-Fi. A couple of things to remember about this match: 1) Neither team are actually on the ECW brand 2) This is the ONLY advertised match for this show, aside from the Extreme Elimination Chamber. The crowd is reasonably excited because they know they're about to see a good match. That will not last. Meanwhile, Tazz is ogling Melina who's in front of the announce table. Mercury and Matt start the match, and Matt has the advantage early on as Mercury's fake tan gets all over the canvas. Standoff between the two, and Jeff and Nitro enter the ring but nothing exciting happens and Matt and Mercury continue exchanging holds. Jeff gets tagged in and works Mercury's arm, Matt does the same as my Network feed freezes. It keeps freezing at the same spots, so apparently this is not my computer trying to protect me from having to watch this show but the encode is just hosed on the Network, and no one's bothered to fix it because nobody in the right mind would watch this show anyway. The Hardys with some nice double team moves on Nitro and Mercury, including a double wheelbarrow suplex. MNM get the advantage with some double team moves of their own on Jeff, as the crowd chants... erm, "SHE'S A CRACKWHORE" at Melina.  That's something you'd hear on original ECW shows basically every time a woman was onscreen, but as much as the Augusta crowd wants to pretend they're at an original ECW show they maybe could've left that particular chant in the past.Nitro misses a standing SSP on Jeff, so Jeff manages to tag Matt in and now Matt is on the offense. Sitout crucifix powerbomb by Matt, that was pretty cool. Melina grabs Matt's foot from the outside and Matt goes after her, but runs into a clothesline. Meanwhile, the crowd's chanting "SHE'S GOT HERPES," another original ECW favorite. Melina chokes Matt with her legs, Xenia Onatopp-style. MNM double-teams Matt with a facebuster as the ref is getting Jeff out of the ring, and Melina keeps screaming. MNM still with the double team moves, even hitting the Poetry in Motion, and excuse me but my ears are bleeding. Probably shouldn't have worn headphones for this. Nitro gets dropped on his "yambag" on the turnbuckle as Matt pushes Mercury into him, and Matt finally gets the task. Jeff takes out Nitro with an elevated sitout facebuster, in comes Matt and dives onto Mercury on the outside. Nitro's looking to dive now, and there he comes. Jeff climbs up top and dives into the pile, because he doesn't want to be left out.  Now we've got the Hardys hitting a bunch of double team moves, but Jeff misses the Swanton and Nitro takes him down with a springboard missile dropkick. I'm not sure who in this match has the worse white guy dreads, Jeff or Mercury. What do you think?  Personally, I'm going with Jeff. Nitro and Jeff continue fighting while the crowd amuses themselves again with classy chants towards Melina. Melina flips them off, good for her. More double team moves by MNM, but Jeff kicks out of the cover attempt. Nitro with a slingshot elbow drop on Jeff over the ropes, but Matt breaks up the pin. Jeff kicks out of a rollup attempt and sends Mercury to the floor, but can't make the tag as Mercury takes Matt down from the apron. Jeff is pulled to MNM's corner, and Nitro is back in. Jeff hits a desperation Whisper in the Wind on Nitro and Mercury, and Matt is finally tagged in. Matt's kicking rear end, hitting the Side Effect on both opponents but Nitro kicks out. Matt goes up to the second rope for the leg drop and it connects. Another two count. Nitro counters Jeff's top rope powerbomb attempt into a frankensteiner!  Jeff is down, but kicks out of the pin at two. Nitro heads up top again but Jeff fights back, Matt and Mercury in the same situation on the opposite end. Stereo superplexes! Jeff goes for the cover but Melina distracts the ref. Melina tries to slap Jeff but Jeff catches it and gets right in her face (I thought at first he was planting a kiss on her, but I'm not sure) Nitro tries to hit Jeff with a dropkick but Jeff dodges it and Melina gets knocked on the floor instead. MNM with the Snapshot on Jeff in the middle of the ring, but Matt breaks up the pin. Melina's still down. MNM attemps the Snapshot off the second rope, but both eat a Twist of Fate instead. Swanton Bomb on Mercury and Nitro, Jeff covers Nitro, 1-2-3 and that's the match!  That... was okay, I guess. There wasn't really any heat to this match and it didn't flow particularly well either, and while it is easily the best match on this show that is not saying much. I give this match two and a half stars, these teams can do much better. **˝ Rob Van Dam talks about how he's going to win the ECW title inside the Extreme Elimination Chamber, because when you think ECW Champion you think Rob Van Dam. Yeah, good luck with that, Rob.  Next, we've got... oh no, it's Matt Striker. Not just any Matt Striker, but Matt Striker, your teacher. Striker gained some notoriety when he got fired from his teaching job after using his sick days to wrestle. WWE wants to be drat sure we know he's a former teacher, as you can probably tell from his getup and general presentation. Striker grabs a mic, and someone in the crowd lifts up a sign that reads "CUE THE CRICKETS". Striker's opponent tonight will be Balls Mahoney, but this is not gonna be just any match. No, this is an Extreme Rules match, that is, an Extreme Enforcement of Rules match. That means: - No gouging of the eyes - No pulling of the hair - No maneuvers off the top rope - And in light of his opponent's name, no foul language Striker says we're about to see if Balls can wrestle under Striker's Rules. Sure, let's get this guy whose main skillset revolves around whacking people in the head with a steel chair, and put him in a match where all of his weaknesses are exposed. On PPV. I can't see this going wrong at all.  Balls enters to an instrumental ripoff of "Big Balls". As Styles and Tazz go over Striker's Rules, I can't help but notice he didn't prohibit the use of foreign objects. Don't get too excited, though, because that just means weapon use is prohibited under standard WWECW rules.  Oh god, he's got his own face on the back of his trunks. I've often thought Matt Striker has his head up his rear end, but this isn't quite what I meant. Anyway, the match gets underway and the two lock up. Balls was actually an amateur wrestler in his high school days (and then got banned for punching a referee, according to Styles) so he could potentially hang with Striker in this stupid match. Balls with a hiptoss and a cross armbreaker, but Striker gets to the ropes. Why is this match on this show? Balls talks trash to Striker, but fortunately doesn't use any foul language. Striker punches Balls right in the face and the announcers think they saw a tooth fly out, which would leave Balls with three. Styles and Tazz have some funny banter on this show, which I guess is something to distract you from the horrors unfolding in the ring. Striker pulls Mahoney's hair because as you'd expect, his rules don't apply to him. Striker works Balls' arm, and this match feels like it's been going on for 47 hours. Also, I can't help noticing that Striker's trunks leave very little to the imagination and if I didn't know what is coming later, I'd assume he's the reason this show has a TV-14 rating for sexual content on the Network.  END! END!! ENNNNNNNDDDDD!! To their credit, the crowd still bothers to chant "BALLS" every time Balls punches Striker. Mercifully, the match finally ends when Balls plants Striker with a sitout spinebuster. I think that has a fancy name, but I don't care. I'm just glad it's over. I guess it was a wrestling match and there were no horrible botches or anything, so I'll give it an extremely generous one star out of five. I'd give it only half a star but ˝* takes more effort to type than *. I reserve zero stars and negative stars for very special occasions, this is just a lovely match on a lovely show so one star it is. *  CM Punk is shown backstage, preparing for the Extreme Elimination Chamber. For some reason, presumably because of the growing popularity of MMA, Punk was billed as a Muay Thai expert early on so he's doing all these strikes and none of it looks even remotely convincing. Elsewhere, we stumble upon a grisly scene as Sabu's been attacked backstage.  Paul Heyman shows up and demands to know what's going on because Sabu's supposed to be in the main event. Sabu is in fact not going to be in the main event, because he is "unresponsive" and about to get carted off by the EMTs. This gets a very loud "BULLSHIT" chant from the crowd, because Sabu has been advertised for the Extreme Elimination Chamber for weeks and now he's being removed from the match when the show is already in progress! Vince already got his money, so what does it matter? gently caress the fans, what do they know about putting on entertaining shows? Besides, he surely has a great replacement lined up, just you wait! Why would they do this, you ask? Well, apparently WWE higherups thought he was "useless" in normal matches and could only perform in matches with "stunts and tables". I... this... you hired Sabu for your ECW show! What in God's name did you expect? Technical wrestling? The man of 1,000 holds? No, wait, you hosed him up too! And even if Sabu is useless in a normal match, you could... I don't know, put him in a gimmick match like the Extreme Elimination Chamber so you can actually hide his weaknesses and focus on the stuff he does well, which is crashing through tables and falling off things, sometimes with a chair in there somewhere! Jesus Christ! gently caress this show. I'm not even halfway through yet, but I'm cutting it here because I can't take any more of this in one sitting. Next time, we'll wade through some more crap. Look forward to it! DMorbid fucked around with this message at 01:06 on Nov 24, 2020 |
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Apr 1, 2020 05:32
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Let's Watch December to Dismember 2006, Part 56 Ah poo poo, here we go again. This took a while because I was watching wrestling shows that weren't crimes against humanity. Our next in-ring masterclass sees Elijah Burke (future D'Angelo Dinero aka The Pope in TNA) and Sylvester Terkay facing off against... err... I don't remember, actually.  Burke grabs a mic and cuts a rather bland promo where he talks about the Elijah Experience and... hold on a second.  Yes, something definitely went wrong here. Elijah puts over Terkay's MMA credentials, and informs us that like animals in heat, tonight they are going to leave their mark. Eww.  Oh, right, the Full Blooded Italians were on this show. Little Guido and Tony Mamaluke are of course ECW originals, and Trinity worked for TNA before joining WWE. Trinity's outfit seems to be missing half its fabric, and I am missing 640x20 pixels off the top of the rest of the images because I didn't notice I had scrolled down on the Network player page when I started grabbing these shots. The FBI hit some double team moves on Burke and work him over with quick tags. Terkay lumbers into the ring and starts hossing it up, and nobody in the crowd gives a solitary gently caress about what's happening. Tazz calls Terkay "Manbear", which reminds me how people would refer to him as "Manbearpig" in the rare occasion someone remembered he existed. The Network encode of the show is having some freezing issues again, which I welcome at this point. This match isn't completely terrible because Burke and both members of the FBI can work, but there's absolutely no reason to care about any of this. Elijah hits the Elijah Experience (aka The Stroke) on Mamaluke after a forearm from Terkay, and that'll be that. Terkay gets back in the ring to inflict more pain on the FBI and the audience, murdering Guido with a Muscle Buster as the crowd chants "TNA".  Well, that's what you get when you use Jeff Jarrett and Samoa Joe's finishers in quick succession like that, I guess. That was certainly a match that just happened. One star out of five. * We return backstage as Sabu is loaded into an ambulance and taken to the Local Medical Facility. Not much to say about that at this point.  Oh, good, the Great Khali is here too. He's been paired with Daivari because of course he has, they're both foreign after all.  This match is apparently between Daivari and Tommy Dreamer. Okay, let's get this over with. I wish this show was bad in a ridiculous way like WCW 2000, instead of just boring and sad. Khali gets ejected from ringside by the ref after interfering in the match, and if he leaves now he might get backstage before the show ends. The crowd chants "We want hardcore" as Daivari has Dreamer in a rear chinlock and transitions into a side headlock. The action is off the chain, I can barely follow this! The video is now freezing more and more frequently, and every time it does I hope it dies again but no such luck yet. Daivari now has a rear naked choke locked in, but Dreamer fights back and Daivari gets slammed on the mat. Dreamer now gets on the offense with some right hands, a back body drop and inverted DDT. Two count, and the match continues to everyone's neverending delight. Dreamer gets pushed off the middle rope and Daivari dives but nobody home. Dreamer's got Daivari in the tree of woe and hits a dropkick to the face. Dreamer goes for the DDT but Daivari counters into a rollup, grabs a handful of tights and wins.  Dreamer chases Daivari up the ramp but runs straight into Khali, who had just about made it to the Gorilla position.  That chokebomb on the steel looked pretty painful. Joey and Tazz switch to the Owen voice as they talk about how Dreamer might have suffered severe injuries. Dreamer tries to stand up on his own and refuses any help from the officials as he crawls backstage, because HE'S HARDCORE! gently caress this match. Half a star. ˝* Paul Heyman bursts into the locker room, where he encounters Hardcore Holly who's just standing there in his ring gear.  Heyman tells Holly that he'll be replacing Sabu in the Extreme Elimination Chamber, and the crowd does not particularly care for this development. Holly was apparently originally meant to be in the Chamber match but Sabu took his spot, but now Holly's back in the match because Vince McMahon insisted he be in the match. To be fair to Holly, he was a mainstay of the hardcore title scene in the Attitude era and also bolstered his hardcore credentials by finishing an extreme rules match on an episode of ECW on Sci-Fi after receiving a horrifying gash to his back in a table bump gone wrong, but... it's Bob Holly. Nobody has ever wanted to see Bob Holly, especially in a PPV main event, and ESPECIALLY if he's replacing someone the fans actually give a gently caress about and has been advertised for the match! For our next trainwreck, we've got Mike Knox and Kelly Kelly going up against Kevin Thorn and Ariel. I think this is the last match before the Extreme Elimination Chamber, so maybe I can actually get to the end of this show.  This is Kelly Kelly's in-ring debut. She first showed up on the first episode of ECW on Sci-Fi, introducing herself as an exhibitionist and doing a TV-14 striptease because I guess someone wanted to recreate THE NIGHT KIMONA WANALAYA DANCED ATOP THE ECW ARENA! Kelly kept doing her thing in the following weeks, but would get interrupted by Mike Knox each time. Knox is supposed to be Kelly's boyfriend in the storyline, and naturally he's an rear end in a top hat heel for not wanting his girlfriend to strip naked on TV. Kelly's also infatuated with CM Punk, which does not exactly please Knox either. Kelly grabs a mic and wishes CM Punk good luck in the Chamber match, to Knox's chagrin. Knox gets in her face as their opponents make their entrance.  Kevin Thorn is the former Mordecai (Remember him? No? I do, he sucked), repackaged with a vampire gimmick. He's accompanied by his valet and fellow bite club enthusiast/tarot card reader Ariel, aka Shelly Martinez. Unlike Kelly, she's at least a trained wrestler even though she was never particularly good in the ring. I'll be honest - I actually really liked this pairing at the time. They had a great look and an awesome entrance, Thorn was decent enough in the ring and Ariel was absolutely gorgeous. Definitely one of the highlights of early WWECW for me. For this match, Ariel's wearing highly appropriate ring gear that includes a frilly skirt and a thong that shows off her entire rear end. That'll be the other part of that TV-14 rating for sexual content, then. Thorn and Knox start the match, and I'm just realizing that this is heel vs. heel and Kelly is the only face in the match. Well, Ariel's outfit probably gets the biggest reaction from the crowd, but you know what I mean. Ariel tags herself in and demands Kelly get in the ring. No, you don't want Kelly to get in the ring, certainly not at this point when she's not even properly trained. She'd eventually get vaguely competent and even held the Divas championship, although she never did learn to run the ropes properly. Ariel chokes Kelly with her boot in the corner, and Tazz momentarily loses his train of thought.  Ariel does a little dance and hits a terrible elbow drop. Kelly tries to tag Knox in, but Knox just walks off and abandons her. Ariel drops Kelly with... was that an STK? That kind of looked like an STK, albeit not very crisp. Ariel covers Kelly by sitting on her face, and the followers of vampirism pick up the win. Ariel beats up Kelly some more, but all of a sudden we hear a generic guitar riff and that can only mean one thing!  You wanna get hardcore? You wanna get extreme? Sandman's not having any of this bloodsucker bullshit on his show, and proceeds to cane the everliving poo poo out of Thorn. Sandman poses for the crowd, and that's that. Half a star. ˝* Backstage, Rebecca DiPietro interviews Bobby Lashley who appears to a chorus of boos from the crowd. We see a video package showing off what happened on ECW the week before, with Lashley getting destroyed by Big Show, Test and Heyman's riot squad (not to be confused with Riott Squad). Rebecca asks how Bobby's going to overcome the odds, and Bobby replies with some bland poo poo I can't be bothered to transcribe. Extreme Elimination Chamber hype video. No man will leave unscathed, indeed. Everyone who saw this show was permanently scarred. Oh, and the hype video still has Sabu in it, just to rub it in a little bit more. Joey and Tazz talk about the upcoming match as Heyman shows up with his riot squad goons. Apparently, those guys were actually Doug and Danny Basham.  Heyman cuts a promo, saying ECW will live on long after his death, and that is all thanks to Paul Heyman. This would be the last time we see him on WWE TV for a very long while. God, he must be so loving pissed right now. Heyman talks about how Sabu was removed from the match and says he personally would have loved to see the suicidal, genocidal, etc. maniac in the Extreme Elimination Chamber, but let's face it - the age of Sabu, Sandman and RVD has come to an end. This is the age of the global phenomenon of ECW, led by Big Show ("WHO'S GONNA RETIRE NEXT YEAR!" a very loud and vocal fan yells, and Show would indeed take a lengthy hiatus shortly after this show). But now, it's time to finish this shitshow. Lower the chamber and let's get this over with so we can all move on with our lives. That same fan is still yelling poo poo throughout all this.  Big Show enters first. Again, he's done a commendable job as the ECW champion and did his best to make it work (the match he had against Ric Flair in particular was insane), but everyone knows he was never supposed to win the belt and no one wanted him to.  Here's the man everyone except Vince McMahon wants to win the belt. Punk only debuted recently, but is super over with the crowd. I remember some people saying he wasn't ready to win the ECW title yet, but come on. The weapon in Punk's pod is a chair.  Holy loving poo poo, Test has taken all the steroids in the world. He looks like he's about to explode. Test's pod has a crowbar in it. A dangerous weapon for sure, but not very spectacular in a wrestling match.  Here's the guy everyone knows is winning the match. I seem to remember some folks including myself hoping that Punk would pull off the win, but realistically we all knew how this was going to go down and were just deluding ourselves. Lashley's weapon is a table. Hardcore Holly enters next. Nobody gives a gently caress. Finally, here's RVD.  RVD and Holly will be starting the match. At least they can both work even though Holly is bland as gently caress, so this shouldn't be a complete disaster. Holly starts things off with some clotheslines and various strikes, and RVD gets tossed to the steel floor. RVD repeats his Spider-Man dive off the chamber wall from 2002, but misses and lands hard on the ropes. Holly's in control and climbs up to the top rope, flying nothing and boot to Holly's face. Rolling Thunder over the ropes to the steel, just like he did to Triple H four years earlier. Holly suplexes RVD into the ring and goes for the pin, RVD kicks out at two. Nice dropkick by Holly and another cover, two count as the first pod is about to open. CM Punk enters the match and the crowd wakes up. Punk throws the chair in Holly's face and hits a springboard clothesline on RVD. Punk tosses the chair to RVD, who throws it right back and clobbers Punk on the head. Monkeyflip by RVD on the chair, Punk lands rear end first. Punk dodges a kick and legdrops RVD's head onto the chair, that looked sick. Punk springboard dropkicks Holly to the outside and goes to work on RVD some more. RVD's busted open above his right eye and gets whipped into the chair in the corner. That also looked nasty,  Holly tosses Punk into the chamber wall and goes for a cover on the floor, Punk kicks out. Holly pummels Punk some more as the crowd chants something that sounds a bit like... hmm. That definitely sounds like something that ends in the six-letter F-word (Apparently, they were chanting "TEST'S A F*****", which I couldn't quite make out with my slightly crappy hearing and didn't realize they were chanting at Test who wasn't even in the ring). Holly superplexes Punk off the top and gets a two count. Punk with the knee to Holly in the corner and goes for the bulldog, but runs into a kick from Van Dam. Test enters with his crowbar and goes straight for RVD's wound, that's pretty gross. Punk manages to take Test down on the outside, and Van Dam kicks Holly in the face in the ring. RVD's got the chair and whacks both Test and Holly with it. Corner dropkick with the steel chair on Punk, and RVD hits the Five Star Frog Splash! 1-2-3 and Punk is the first man eliminated. The crowd hates this and has now officially turned on the match. Test hits a big boot on Holly, eliminating him from the match. Good riddance. I actually completely missed this elimination at first and had to go back to see what happened to Holly, as I suddenly realized he was no longer in the match (he also kicked out at two but got eliminated anyway). That's how memorable his turn in the Extreme Elimination Chamber was. Test gets kicked by RVD, who climbs on top of Big Show's pod. Show grabs the leg and Test hits RVD with the chair. Test places the chair on RVD's face and... climbs on top of the pod?  MOTHER OF GOD! Test covers RVD after that huge elbow drop and eliminates him from the match, so that's both guys the crowd cared about taken out of the match in about a minute. Props to Test for that spot, though, because holy poo poo. How did his skeleton not launch itself out of his body on impact? Meanwhile, the crowd is chanting for refunds. When I first watched this in 2006, I didn't even pay for it but still wanted my money back. Lashley's pod opens, but Officer Basham and Officer Basham lock him inside with a chain. Test taunts Lashley, who proceeds to use the table to smash his way through the steel chains. Lashley climbs on top of the pod and to the top rope, hitting a diving clothesline on Test. Lashley shoves Test into not one but two of the pods, smashing the plexiglass. The fight continues with both men now in the ring. The crowd chants "YOU BOTH SUCK!" BORING chants ring out in the James Brown Arena as Lashley spears Test and eliminates him. THIS IS BULLSHIT chants now. Lashley waits for Big Show to enter as Heyman tries to psyche up Big Show. CHANGE THE CHANNEL chants from the crowd. Lashley is trying to smash up the pod, but there's only a few seconds left so might as well just wait for Big Show to get in. Big Show's got the barbwire bat and swings it at Lashley, who uses the chair to block. Lashley loses the chair but the bat gets stuck between the chains, so Lashley grabs the chair again and hits Show with it. Lashley poses for the crowd and receives massive boos like the all-conquering babyface he is. Lashley throws Show through the nearest pod and continues the beatdown inside. Show busts out the remaining wall of the pod as Heyman's losing his poo poo on the outside. Show motions for the chokeslam, but Lashley counters into a DDT. LET'S GO BIG SHOW chants. Lashley and Show continue swinging at each other, Big Show runs into the corner, Show goes for Lashley's own Dominator finisher (not to be confused with Faarooq's Dominator, which is what Lashley initially used but switched to the running powerslam), but Bobby breaks his way free and spears Big Show. One, two, three, and it's finally over. Thank God. This match was not that terrible in a vacuum as most guys in the ring at least put in the effort and Heyman tried to salvage what he could with his booking. Ignoring everything surrounding it, the match would be a **˝ affair at the very least, but but sadly this match did not take place in a vacuum and was in fact so bad it basically killed the ECW brand. That means I'm giving the Extreme Elimination Chamber a rating of zero stars, and even that's being generous because everything surrounding this match makes me want to tear my hair out.  drat straight, Paul. I couldn't agree more. After the show, Heyman and Vince McMahon would get into a huge argument as Vince blamed Heyman for the trainwreck we just witnessed, and Heyman was escorted from the arena and sent home. He then met with Vince and Stephanie McMahon and left the company. WWE.com cited "slumping television ratings and a disgruntled talent roster as causes for Mr. Heyman's dismissal" because of course they did, and Tommy Dreamer and Stevie Richards asked for their releases but were refused by Vince and John Laurinaitis because gently caress you. Heyman and Big Show both wanted Show to get eliminated first by CM Punk, who was supposed to go on and win the entire thing. Then when Vince opposed the idea and demanded Lashley win the match, Heyman and Show still wanted Punk to eliminate Show first because that would've gotten him over as a bonafide star, but Vince wouldn't have any of it because God forbid anyone get over if he personally didn't engineer it. Instead, Punk was made to look like a loser geek, because Vince thought Punk was a loser geek and anyone who thought otherwise could kiss his rear end. You can boo all you want, it's not gonna change anything. We know better than you marks. You're gonna love Bobby and that's that. If you don't love Bobby, we'll poo poo on all your favorite guys and make them look like worthless assholes so you have no choice but to cheer for Lashley! Deal with it! Hmm... why does that sound so familiar? Oh yeah, because they'd repeat the same sort of deal with Roman Reigns in 2015!  The show ends after only 2 hours and 14 minutes, but instead of being mad about not getting a full three-hour PPV I welcome the end at this point. Jesus Christ, what a goddamn garbage fire. The opening match wasn't a disaster and the Extreme Elimination Chamber had a couple of fun moments, but overall this is a strong contender for the worst PPV of all time, especially for what it represents. This whole show is nothing but a demonstration of Vince McMahon being Vince McMahon and making GBS threads over everything he did not personally create, and the sheer contempt towards the audience here is just mindblowing. My overall grade for December to Dismember 2006 is an F+, and even that's pushing it.
DMorbid fucked around with this message at 23:00 on Jun 4, 2020 |
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Apr 2, 2020 13:34
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Brian Zane of Wrestling With Wregret just reviewed WM23 this past week so the events of that show might be a bit too fresh on my mind for a full rewatch, but I guess I could give it a shot.
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Apr 4, 2020 02:29
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Hey everyone, sorry about not posting updates for a while. December to Dismember almost defeated me, and then Persona 5 Royal happened.  I'm almost done with P5R now, so it's time to start figuring out what to do next. While I still have my WWE Network trial, I kinda... don't want to give WWE any more views right now so I'll do something a bit different. Technically, the next show I'm covering isn't even an old PPV, but let's face it - May 2019 might as well have been a decade ago. So, with that in mind, my next PPV review is going to be AEW Double or Nothing 2019!
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Apr 16, 2020 16:36
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Let's Watch: AEW Double or Nothing 2019, Part 0 (Buy In) As I said, Double or Nothing is technically not an "old" PPV by any stretch of the imagination and as such it shouldn't qualify for the old PPVs thread, but like I also said May 2019 might as well have been ten years ago. This time, I'm not only going to go through the entire PPV but also the Buy In preshow. I generally don't cover preshows in these reviews because A) they're usually not easily available and B) they don't really matter much. However, the Buy In is an important moment in wrestling history because it is quite literally our first glimpse at All Elite Wrestling as a promotion, so I feel it's worth a look before we get to the actual PPV. The preshow opens with clips from the big AEW press conference in Las Vegas earlier in the year, and we're ready to go. Excalibur and Alex Marvez welcome us to the MGM Grand Arena in Las Vegas, and seem to slightly mess up their timing immediately.  There will be some awkward moments with the commentary and the production in general as the night goes on, because this is the first AEW show and some rough edges are inevitable. Marvez in particular never quite seems at home in the commentary booth and would transition into the role of a backstage interviewer a few months down the line. Excalibur and Marvez hype up the matches we'll be seeing tonight. A curious omission here is the six-woman joshi showcase match, which I remember made a lot of people including myself quite worried because there had been rumors the match wasn't happening due to visa issues with the talent. There had already been some major worry and rumors surrounding the cancellation of the match between "Hangman" Adam Page and PAC, as apparently that match could not take place because PAC was an undefeated champion in Dragon Gate and a loss on an AEW show would have hurt him. So, that's one exciting match that got scrapped for the time being, and another one that may or may not be happening. Not exactly the most auspicious way to get off the blocks for the All Elite crew, but let's see how the first official AEW match fares. Ring announcer Justin Roberts introduces the first ever Casino Battle Royal. Whoever wins this match will face the winner of tonight's Kenny Omega/Chris Jericho main event and compete for the AEW world title at the next major PPV. The Casino Battle Royal is a bit of a strange and gimmicky battle royal variant, as the participants are divided into groups based on the suit of the special card each of them drew before the match. Here are the full rules:  Fair enough. The Clubs are the first ones in the ring, with a couple of recognizable faces (well, in hindsight anyway, as I had no clue who Maxwell Jacob Friedman, Michael Naka-Naka-Nakazawa or Brandon Cutler were a year ago) in there along with some face-painted dude called Sunny Daze and a double amputee wrestler named Dustin Thomas.  I have nothing but the utmost respect for Dustin and I'm happy for him for getting to perform on a big event like this, but I also imagine there must have been more than a few people making terrible jokes about rear end-kicking contests that night. The match starts and MJF immediately goes to stomp on Dustin Thomas, calling him "Lieutenant Dan". Oh, MJF. Cutler works on MJF but MJF gets the upper hand and talks more trash. Nakazawa lathers himself with baby oil as he so often does, and goes through his usual slippery antics. Daze almost throws Cutler over the top, but Cutler stays on the apron and gets back in. MJF heels it up some more and gets massive boos from the crowd before going for Cutler again and then bullying Thomas some more. The Diamonds are about to join the match, so let's see who we've got. Brian Pillman Jr. and Isiah Kassidy are the first Diamonds to enter, and Pillman immediately brutalizes Kassidy by tossing him into the guardrail next to the ramp. He then gets suplexed on the ramp for his troubles by Jimmy Havoc and Joey Janela, the latter accompanied by his valet Penelope Ford. But wait, who is that hooded man wearing a "10" scarf at the top of the ramp? Why, it's Shawn Spears! I forgot he was in this match. One of the big issues with the Casino Battle Royal is that wrestlers don't get individual entrances or introductions, so if you're not familiar with these guys it can be tough to figure out who some of them are. Spears lays out MJF and gets a huge pop. I definitely forgot he debuted as a face in this match. The Hearts are about to enter, and I'm pretty sure that wasn't three minutes but whatever. Our next entrants are Billy Gunn, Glacier(!), Jungle Boy and Marq Quen, and there's one more... whoa, that's a big boy. His name is Ace Romero, apparently. As Romero makes his way to the ring, Jungle Boy hits a headscissor takedown on Janela who sells it by spiking himself on his head. Glacier gets in the ring and MJF mocks him with a ridiculous crane kick pose. MJF has been pretty great in this match so far. Glacier sweeps the leg and takes MJF down, but is sent to the outside by Sunny Daze. That was through the ropes, so Glacier's still in the match. Daze tosses Nakazawa on the apron and eventually eliminates him as the announcers suggest the baby oil might have backfired on him. Janela lights a cigarette while Glacier spits mist in Daze's face, freezing him with his cryomancer powers. He then gets unceremoniously tossed out by MJF. As Billy Gunn stalks MJF who is still taunting Glacier, we cut to Janela to discover his cigarette is now firmly stapled into his forehead. Meanwhile, Our latest entrants are Luchasaurus, Marko Stunt (as I yell "THAT IS AN ACTUAL CHILD!" at my TV while watching this live), Sonny Kiss and Tommy F'n Dreamer. Marko manages to take down Billy Gunn in the ring, but Billy is still in the match. Marko flosses but MJF pushes him from behind. Dreamer gets knocked off the apron but isn't eliminated because he hadn't entered the ring yet, and runs into Luchasaurus and Sonny Kiss. Ace Romero notices the three of them and BIG BOY TOPE SUICIDA!  Can't say I expected that. Romero and Luchasaurus have a big boy fight in the middle of the ring, but I think we can safely say Romero is the biggest boy. Tommy brings out a trash can full of plunder, and it lands right on Luchasaurus. Trash can lid shots to everyone, trash can to Havoc's face followed by an Ace Crusher. Luchasaurus chokeslams both members of Private Party, and the Joker is about to come out. The last man in the match is "Hangman" Adam Page, whose knee is taped up as a result of his match with PAC in England (which was booked to explain why the Double or Nothing match wasn't going to take place) Wait, shouldn't there have been five wrestlers in that last group? Hangman cleans house in the ring and faces off with Joey Janela. They exchange flurries of blows, until Hangman murders Janela with the Dead Eye. Hangman tries to lift Romero but that's not gonna work. Jungle Boy and Marko now attack Romero with some double team offense, but Jungle Boy gets crushed by Romero when attempting a sleeper. Romero launches Marko out of the ring, right on top of Private Party. Quen doesn't quite manage to catch him so he lands pretty hard. Jungle Boy throws Romero out but Janela clobbers him. Janela gets DDT'd by Spears after kicking Dustin Thomas, and now Thomas motions for a 619. Thomas hits the 619 followed by a 450 off the ropes, but MJF knocks him right back down and puts him on the top rope. Shawn Spears goes for Thomas, who throws Spears out by using the ropes as leverage. I most definitely forgot Shawn Spears' first appearance in AEW ended with him being eliminated from the match by a guy with no legs. MJF then eliminates Thomas, Gunn hits the Fameasser on Cutler but Cutler blocks it and gets right back up to eliminate Gunn, only for MJF to eliminate him from behind. Luchasaurus with some strikes on Janela, goes for the chokeslam and JESUS GOD HE MURDERED HIM  I know that was safer than it looked, but goddamn. Butt-based offense by Sonny Kiss on Dreamer, but the Innovator of Violence doesn't appreciate it and throws Sonny out. Business finally picks up as Orange Cassidy makes his entrance about ten minutes after the rest of his group. I had no clue what the gently caress an Orange Cassidy was, so this was slightly confusing. Orange then starts delivering some of his trademark stiff kicks to Dreamer, and at this point I basically understood what his deal was.  However, Dreamer doesn't seem to know what to make of the King of Sloth Style and knocks him down with a hard right hand. Orange kips up with his hands in his pockets, but Dreamer still isn't impressed and promptly throws him out. Jimmy Havoc staples Dreamer in the forehead and in the dick because why not, and now Dreamer's out. Luchasaurus and Jungle Boy knock Havoc down and MJF tries to throw Jungle Boy to the outside, Jungle Boy holds on but Havoc bites his fingers and eliminates him. Now it's down to the final four as Page, Havoc and Luchasaurus stalk MJF and beat him up, MJF goes to the outside but not over the top so he's still in. Page and Havoc work on Luchasaurus and then start pummeling each other, Havoc's got the advantage but Page counters the Acid Rainmaker to send Havoc to the apron. Luchasaurus kicks Havoc out of the match and goes for a tombst... oh, it's just some silly pancake gutbuster thing on Hangman. Hangman finally throws Luchasaurus out, and the bell rings. "Hangman" Adam Page has won the Casino Battle Royal! No, wait, he has not, as he soon discovers when MJF tosses him over the ropes. Hangman lands on the apron, and MJF is too busy celebrating to realize Hangman's still in. MJF eats a Buckshot Lariat and gets eliminated with a clothesline, and that is it for the Casino Battle Royal. Hangman Page has won the right to face the winner of tonight's main event, and it'll be for the world title at All Out. I don't think they called it All Out yet, but whatever. The Casino Battle Royal is kind of a trainwreck. It's got some fun spots and colorful characters, but I don't think AEW should have opened their first show with a glorified comedy match. Leading up to the show, the Elite and Tony Khan talked about how AEW was planning to go for a more sports-style presentation, and this most definitely was not that. I remember some posters in the live GDT saying AEW was just TNA again, and based on this match alone I couldn't really disagree. Battle royals are difficult to rate in general, and I feel the casino gimmick didn't really add much to the match aside from the Orange Cassidy bit. Two stars out of five. ** "You need to order this match," says Alex Marvez. I know commentary, especially live commentary, is really tough if you're not used to doing it, so I'm not gonna dunk on Marvez too much for his gaffes and general awkwardness. That being said, I'm glad he's no longer in the booth because he's much better as an interviewer. Excalibur and Marvez go over the card again, and there's still no mention of the joshi match. I was really quite worried about the fate of that match, because I really wanted to see Yuka Sakazaki. Alicia Atout interviews Kylie Rae backstage. Kylie is very hyped about the show, but is interrupted by "The Librarian" Peter Avalon who shushes her. He then gets shushed by "The Librarian" Leva Bates, and the two have a shush-off as Kylie awkwardly looks on. I'd like to take this moment to say two things: - Kylie Rae is great and I wish she'd come back to AEW. - The sound of shushing is basically nails on a chalkboard for me, so that segment was loving dreadful to sit through. At least it was short, but AEW didn't do themselves any favors by putting this segment with these insufferable characters after the gimmick battle royal. Cody vs. Dustin Rhodes hype package. Most people seemed to have low expectations for this match and figured it might be a solid three-star outing with enough smoke and mirrors. I mean, it's Stardust vs. Goldust, how good can a match like that be? In any event, it's time to head back to ringside as Sammy Guevara makes his entrance. He's not the Spanish God yet, instead calling himself "The Best Ever" which is honestly kind of a crummy nickname. He does, however, have the panda head in all its fluffy glory.  I miss the panda head. Apparently it was a pain in the rear end to transport, or something like that.  Sammy's opponent is "Superbad" Kip Sabian, who isn't really showing any superbad tendencies here and plays the role of a bland babyface. As Kip makes his entrance, Guevara reclines on the ropes and looks smug. Sammy Guevara rules. I'm not going to provide blow-by-blow commentary here because I can't keep up with these guys. This is the match they should have kicked off the preshow with, to show what awesome matches AEW has to offer. These guys work very well with each other, doing all manner of flippy poo poo. Sabian hits a springboard rolling senton on the outside, and Sammy returns the favor by nearly flattening the cameraman as well as Sabian. Sabian locks Sammy in the Cruciatus Clutch, which is a great name for a submission if you ignore the fact it's a Harry Potter reference. More flippy poo poo, standing SSP from Sammy gets a two count from referee Aubrey Edwards. Springboard dropkick takes Sammy down, both men off their feet. Guevara tries to suplex Sabian over the ropes but Sabian hangs on to suplex Guevara, but Guevara counters that into another suplex on the floor. That was crazy. Guevara drapes Sabian on the guardrail, climbs up onto the apron and HOLY gently caress GUILLOTINE SSP  Both men are down again as we get a loud "holy poo poo" chant. Yep, that sounds about right. Sammy motions for the 630 and climbs up to the top rope as Sabian's back in the ring, Sabian gets the knees up. Deathly Hallows by Sabian, and that's that. This was a great showcase of AEW's young talent. I had never heard of either of these guys before this match, but they pulled out some impressive stuff out there and Sammy in particular already looked like a superstar. I don't have any particularly strong feelings towards Sabian, but he's fun to watch in the ring and is much more entertaining now that he's paired with Penelope Ford (both onscreen and in real life). The match was a total spotfest and rather short as well, but that's fine because it did its job and helped remind us that yes, there is going to be some real good wrestling on this show. Three stars. *** Sadie Gibbs video package, showing her training and hitting various wrestling moves on her training partner. We go back to Marvez and Excalibur as we're only six minutes away from Double or Nothing. Excalibur says they're about to introduce the third man in the booth, Boomer Soomer (sic) himself, Jim Ross! We see JR backstage, making his way towards ringside, but before we get to his proper introduction we cut to the parking lot where a large black pickup truck has just rolled in. The left rear window opens, and it's...  DOGGO  Oh, and I guess Cody and Brandi Rhodes are there too. This is followed by some goofy scenes with the members of the Elite, with Kenny Omega giving a silly Hacksaw Jim Duggan-style thumbs up and Matt Jackson encountering Michael Nakazawa backstage and seeming disturbed. Matt meets up with Nick, who superkicks a security worker asking for credentials. The Being the Elite intro plays as the group enter the arena to an enormous ovation and A-E-DUB chants. Everyone takes turns to welcome us to the first-ever All Elite Wrestling show and cut a short promo about how cool this whole thing is. The preshow actually cuts out mid-sentence while Cody is talking ("We're about to make--"), which is not exactly the smoothest end to the Buy In but there you go. Next time, we'll actually start the show. I'm looking forward to this one a lot. DMorbid fucked around with this message at 13:30 on Mar 21, 2022 |
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Apr 17, 2020 22:04
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Let's Watch: AEW Double or Nothing 2019, Part 1 Well then! It's been a while, hasn't it? It's been a crazy year and I've gotten distracted by various projects and other nonsense, but I was always going to get back to this eventually. It's finally time for AEW Double or Nothing 2019!  The show opens with the US national anthem, performed by Chris, Veronica and Jadelyn Jackson. Personally, I've always thought the best-ever rendition of this song was Leslie Nielsen's rousing performance in The Naked Gun, and if you ask me all sports events should just play that instead of wasting money on all these performers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73ZsDdK0sTI Following the national anthem, we see a promo package hyping up the matches and showing highlights from the press conference in Vegas. I still love the Double or Nothing theme song and I'm glad they brought it back for the 2020 event. Man, I miss live crowds. Jim Ross, Excalibur and the world's most awkward man, Alex Marvez hype up the card, and they're still not mentioning the joshi showcase (as I alluded to earlier, there were some rumors going around that the joshis couldn't get their visas sorted out and the match wouldn't happen). I'd better see Yuka Sakazaki or I'll be very angry. But never mind that, it's time for the first match!  The opening match on AEW's inaugural PPV sees SCU take on the Stronghearts. Christopher Daniels, Scorpio Sky and Frankie Kazarian do their Worst Town shtick to pump up the crowd, and while I'm not necessarily a huge fan of said shtick they are excellent wrestlers with plenty of charisma. Christopher Daniels was one of my favorite wrestlers in the mid-00s but sadly never really got a chance to shine in a major promotion while in his prime. Sure, his work with AJ Styles and Samoa Joe in TNA's X-Division is legendary, but he was good enough to hold a world title in any promotion.  The Stronghearts are CIMA, T-Hawk and El Lindaman, not to be confused with Till Lindemann. I'd never seen T-Hawk and El Lindaman before, but of course I'm familiar with CIMA and know exactly how good he is (very). The announcers talk about OWE bringing pro wrestling to China, but I think that just kinda fizzled out at some point and there was some stuff about OWE relocating to Cambodia or something before COVID hit and everything went to poo poo. JR keeps calling them the Chinese contingent, and I'm not entirely convinced that he doesn't actually think the wrestlers themselves are Chinese instead of Japanese. Daniels and CIMA start in the ring, lots of fast-paced action as they trade arm drags and all that cool stuff. This show was the first time I'd seen Daniels in... poo poo, probably over a decade, and while he might've lost a step or two he's still a very good wrestler. T-Hawk and Kazarian are tagged in and slow things down for a bit. Scorpio Sky tags himself in and hits a nice dropkick on T-Hawk. Scorpio Sky is awesome, but that doesn't stop T-Hawk from flattening him with a huge sitout spinebuster. El Lindaman enters the ring and just look at how cool this dude is.  Wrestlers who only wear trunks and short boots always look extra naked. It's a very powerful look. Lindaman and T-Hawk go to work on Scorpio with some double team moves, for which AEW rules give them ten seconds instead of the usual five before the illegal man has to get out. You know, I also really like the AEW logo on the canvas. I wish they'd bring that back. Kazarian and Daniels hit some slingshot leg drops on Lindaman, and now SCU is in control with Daniels as the legal man. CIMA clobbers Daniels with a knee drop, and the pace picks up again. CIMA and T-Hawk with some double team moves on Daniels, the Stronghearts are firmly in control at this point as they work on Daniels. Daniels hits the STO and makes it to Scorpio for the hot tag, Scorpio comes in like a house of fire and takes down CIMA and T-Hawk. The numbers game eventually proves too strong and Scorpio eats a couple of big moves including a lovely German suplex by Lindaman for a nearfall. Scorpio tags Kazarian in and Kazarian nearly pins both CIMA and T-Hawk, but doesn't quite get the three count. TOPE SUICIDA by Daniels takes Lindaman down, CIMA and Scorpio now the legal men, big slingshot cutter by Scorpio and this match is awesome. Daniels and T-Hawk take each other out with a double clothesline, and we get a big AEW chant from the crowd. ANGEL'S WINGS! DEADLIFT GERMAN SUPLEX! METEORA! Kazarian dives out of the ring and hits a headscissors on T-Hawk, Scorpio dives out of the ring with a tope con giro to take out CIMA and T-Hawk. Kaz has Lindaman in a tombstone position, BME by Daniels and that'll do it.  1-2-3 and SCU is victorious in the opening match. Wait, did they call that finish the "Best Meltzer Ever"? That's awesome. That was a very good match, both teams worked their asses off and I hope we'll see more of the Stronghearts some day if the COVID situation ever allows it. Of course, SCU would become the first-ever AEW tag team champions, and this was an excellent way for them to introduce themselves to the audience. I give this match four stars out of five. ****  Allie has joined the announce team for the next match, which is the first women's match in AEW history as Kylie Rae takes on Dr. Britt Baker D.M.D. and Nyla Rose.  I really liked Kylie Rae and it's a shame we never saw her in the AEW women's division. She recently retired from wrestling altogether after a stint in Impact Wrestling, and I wish her well on whatever she decides to do next. Nyla Rose already has a great look here but isn't quite the finished article in terms of her in-ring work, that'll come eventually. Baker, in case you didn't know, is a dentist, and her music and video are the exact same ones she's using now as a heel. I always thought her entire presentation screamed heel, but it took them a while to actually turn her. I'm glad they did, because the Role Model gimmick is amazing and one of the best things in AEW. Before the match starts, Brandi Rhodes comes out in her ring gear. It looks like she's going to enter the match, which isn't ideal because Brandi isn't very good in the ring. However, that turns out to be a swerve and she's actually here to add someone else into the match. She's going to make this match... awesome.  Hell yeah! Britt and Nyla look aghast while Kylie Rae happily claps along to Awesome Kong's theme. This is now officially a fatal four-way match, and everyone immediately attacks Kong. Kong tosses Britt and Kylie aside and faces down with Nyla, who gets sent to the outside. Kong brutalizes Kylie and Britt but gets thrown out, and now it's Kylie going for a rollup for a two-count. Britt and Kylie go at it now, and Baker actually mocks Kylie for a bit there. Britt tries to go for a diving crossbody but Kong catches her, Kylie takes both down on the outside but now Nyla takes control. Big spinebuster absolutely wrecks Kylie, but only gets a two-count. Nyla going for the Beast Bomb but eats a Slingblade from Baker. Nyla is still very much in control and murders Baker with a Samoan Drop, goes for the Beast Bomb again but Kylie reverses into a sunset flip, Baker breaks up the pin. Nyla goes up top but Baker and Kylie try to superplex her, Kong comes in and powerbombs all of them off the top!  Kong has Britt in a powerbomb position on the outside, but opts for a spinning backfist instead. Excalibur mentions Kong learned that from Aja Kong, and confirms we are in fact going to be seeing Aja Kong in action later tonight. I remember being very happy to hear that while watching this live, because Aja Kong owns and it also meant we'd see the other joshis in action too. Amazing Kong goes for a powerbomb on the apron, but Baker fights out and lands a superkick on the jaw of Kong. Kong falls off the apron but is still standing... until Nyla comes out of nowhere and spears Kong into the ring steps. That leaves Kylie and Britt alone in the ring, Britt goes for a rollup but Kylie kicks out, big kick to the head but Baker is still in the match and hits the spinning neckbreaker. Kylie looks out of it but kicks out at 2.9. Nyla and Kong are still on the outside as Kylie hits a deadlift German suplex, El Lindaman style, for another two count.  Kylie is fired up but walks straight into a superkick, and I just love the visual of her ribbon flying right off. Baker hits a sitout neckbreaker for the three-count, and that'll be that. Not the most amazing match ever in terms of ring work, but very entertaining nonetheless. ***˝ We see clips of Kenny Omega and Chris Jericho preparing backstage, and then it's time for bow-wibbity-bow-wibbity-Best Friends, Trent Beretta and Chuck Taylor. Yes, Justin Roberts actually calls him "Beretta" here.  They're facing off against The Hybrid 2 - Jack Evans and Angelico. This should be pretty fun. As we wait for the bell to ring, Evans keeps talking trash to no one in particular, as he so often does. Jack Evans does not need a microphone. His voice is loving powerful.  Evans and Trent start the match off and Evans is still talking. Chuck gets in the ring and we see some tag team action, and YOU GOT TO GIVE THE PEOPLE WHAT THEY... oh, never mind, TH2 double dropkick them in the back. Evans with a handspring back elbow, takes himself out of the ring and lands on his feet. TH2 are clearly the heels here, but the crowd gives them a massive ovation because they're cool and good. Flippy poo poo from Evans gets a two count. Angelico uses his Mexican submission style on Trent with some flashy holds, but Chuck breaks it up. Trent takes Angelico off his feet and goes for the tag, but Evans knocks Taylor off the apron and proceeds to argue with referee Bryce Remsburg. I don't think Evans has stopped talking since this match began. Evans runs into a massive clothesline by Trent, and now Trent makes the tag to Chuck. Taylor throws Evans onto Angelico in the corner, FALCON ARROW in the middle of the ring. Nobody kicks out of the Falcon Arrow! Well, nobody but Jack Evans, anyway. Standing Shiranui (or Sliced Bread, if you prefer) and double foot stomp by Chuck on Angelico on the floor, Trent with a tornado DDT on Evans. Chuck is the legal man and hits the stomp on Evans, but Evans kicks out of the pin attempt. The Best Friends beat Evans up some more and land the Sole Food/Half and Half, YOU GOT TO GIVE THE PEOPLE WHAT THEY WANT!  Crucifix into the crusher for another nearfall. The Best Friends are in control but Angelico sweeps Chuck off the apron, and now it's TH2's time to shine with some flashy double team stuff. Angelico has Trent in a fireman's carry and Evans launches off Trent to hit a moonsault on Chuck on the outside!  Holy poo poo. It's Angelico and Trent now, Angelico with the crucifix buckle bomb. 630 SPLASH by Evans, Chuck breaks up the pin! Trent rolls Evans up but Evans kicks out. The crowd begins a THIS IS AWESOME chant, and I kind of agree. Evans doesn't, as he yells "THIS ISN'T AWESOME, I'M AWESOME!" Doomsday Sexy Chuckie Knee to Evans, Chuck with a Tope con Giro to Angelico, and... uh... whatever this is called!  1-2-3 and the Best Friends win the match. Another excellent match, four out of five stars. **** After the match, the Best Friends want to bring TH2 in for a hug but they seem a bit reluctant, but there we g--oh, the lights went out. Oh dear.  WHAT ARE THEY DOING HERE? Wait, who are they? The lights go out again, and when they come back on the ring is surrounded by spooky perverts. The spooky perverts beat up both teams and pose in the ring as the crowd chants "WHO ARE YOU?" This, of course, is The Dark Order, but we don't know that yet because I don't think AEW had quite figured out what to call the Super Smash Bros. yet.  Tag yourself, I'm the one on the left. The lights go out again and we go into an AEW promo package. There's a bit of a look back at the previous year's All In. Apparently, Double or Nothing sold out in four minutes, which is pretty good going. I think this is a promo for the next PPV... yep, there it is, All Out in Chicago on August 31, 2019. The announcers hype up All Out, and JR tells us to check out AEW.com for more information. AEW.com is in fact not the All Elite Wrestling website.  I think that's where we'll stop for now. Next time, we'll start off with AYAYAYAYAYAYAY 
DMorbid fucked around with this message at 18:06 on Dec 5, 2020 |
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Dec 5, 2020 12:54
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Let's Watch: AEW Double or Nothing 2019, Part 2 It's time for the six-woman joshi showcase as Hikaru Shida, Ryo Mizunami and Riho take on Emi Sakura, Aja Kong and Yuka Sakazaki!  Leading up to the show, Tony Khan and Kenny Omega talked about how the joshi wrestlers would essentially be AEW's version of the WCW cruiserweight division, showing off a style of wrestling rarely seen in US promotions before. Let's see how this big showcase goes.  I don't remember if I'd seen Riho prior to this PPV. I recall seeing an Ice Ribbon show in 2012 or so, but can't say for sure if Riho was on the card. I wouldn't be surprised if she was, because she started wrestling at 9 years old and would've already been active in 2012.  I don't know much about Mizunami because I've never really followed joshi. I do like her colorful look and personality (which gives me a Japanese punk rock vibe) and she's no slouch in the ring either, but that's really all I can say about her at this point. I apologize in advance if I accidentally call her Mizutani at some point, because that name kept popping into my head for some reason.  This was also my first encounter with Hikaru Shida, and she immediately came across like a star. I actually forgot she didn't have the entrance video with the mirror suit yet (instead, both teams have generic videos with the Japanese flag, some JPGs of the wrestlers, and their names in Generic Asian Font #38), but everyone including her do have their theme songs. If you haven't listened to Shida's "SHINING SAMURAAAI" theme in full, you should because it's great. It's got both a face-melting heavy metal section and a lounge jazz break, and she apparently plays piano on it.  Speaking of amazing theme songs, here's Yuka Sakazaki. Prior to this, I'd only seen the occasional clip and heard her theme, but those were more than enough to get my attention and I'm not exaggerating even slightly when I say one of the main reasons I bought Double or Nothing was to see the magical girl in action.   Emi Sakura's theme is godawful but Yuka's air guitar somewhat makes up for it. I should probably get around to watching Gatoh Move/ChocoPro at some point because it sounds amazing.  Here's Aja Kong. Aja Kong is gonna gently caress you up. Any questions so far? Back in the mid-90s, Aja worked some WWF shows and scared the poo poo out of Vince McMahon by, well, being Aja Kong. After her match with Chaparrita Asari, Vince complained about her working too stiff and the joshi experiment ended there. Can you imagine being one of Vince's cronies and having to inform Aja Kong that her services are no longer required because she works too stiff? Yuka actually gets some streamers when she enters the ring, which is a nice touch. You don't usually see streamers at US shows because there are no trainees around the ring to clean them up.  The match starts with Shida and Yuka in the ring. Some fast-paced action there, and Yuka gets to show off some of her personality as well. Mizunami and Kong are tagged in and Kong unsurprisingly overpowers her. Mizunami tries to topple Kong and eventually knocks her down with a shoulder block, but eats some strikes to the face and gets taken down. Riho and her mentor Emi are now tagged in, great little sequence there and I love how the crowd just goes "OHHHHH" when they see Riho's moves. Yuka is tagged in and Alex Marvez sounds completely mesmerized as he says "magical girl." He sounds like Brock from Pokémon in that episode where a Gastly disguises itself as a beautiful maiden and hypnotizes Brock and James.Yuka hits a splash off the top rope on Riho, step-up huracanrana, great action there. Dropkick by Yuka takes down Riho, Yuka covers and Riho bridges out of it.  That gets another "OHHHH" from the crowd and rightly so. I was super impressed by this spot when watching this live. I also have to say I hadn't quite realized how much I've missed Riho in AEW until I started rewatching this match. Emi comes back in and puts Riho in the Romero Special before tagging Kong back in. We get a "THIS IS WRESTLING" chant from the crowd, as Kong attempts to kick Riho's spine out of her body. Kong flattens Riho with an elbow drop for a two count and follows up with a piledriver. Shida and Mizunami break up the pin and Yuka now goes for a cover, but Riho kicks out and tags Mizunami in. Mizunami comes in like a house of fire and pushes Kong into Yuka before taking Kong down with a spear. Machine gun chops in the corner by Mizutani, she pumps up the crowd before landing a big clothesline and a German suplex on Yuka. Big lariat by Mizunami takes Yuka down, and now it's Riho against Kong again. Riho hits the 702 (619) and goes for a top rope crossbody but gets wrecked by Kong.  Somehow, Riho kicks out. Kong climbs up top and misses an elbow drop, Riho tags Shida into the ring and Shida goes for a brainbuster, but can't get Kong up for the move. Cheap shot to the back by Emi on the apron, Emi distracts referee Aubrey Edwards as Yuka throws a metal can (the same one Kong carried during her entrance) to Kong. Shida dodges the metal can and grabs her kendo stick from the corner. Shida briefly disarms Kong and throws the kendo stick aside, but Kong clobbers her knee with the can as she comes off the ropes and follows up with a hit to the head. Emi is ready to rock you and gets the crowd into it as well, big double underhook backbreaker takes Shida down. Shida fights back and now we have a strike exchange in the middle of the ring as Shida and Emi scream at each other. Shida lands a knee strike right to Emi's face, and Riho follows up with double knees to the back of the head. Emi is on the apron, Shida climbs up and lifts Emi up for a superplex. That kinda ruled. Mizunami hits a guillotine leg drop off the top and Shida covers, but Yuka breaks it up. Mizunami and Riho try to suplex Kong but she reverses and suplexes both, they land on the outside and Yuka follows up with the Magical Girl Splash.  Kong plants Shida with a brainbuster and Emi follows up with a moonsault, Shida kicks out at two but the bell rings anyway and Emi seemingly picks up the win, although it's Shida's music that starts playing for a second. Aubrey Edwards isn't having any of that nonsense and gestures that this was most definitely a two count.  Kong goes for the spinning backfist but Shida avoids it and Emi gets hit instead. Riho takes Kong down with a diving crossbody, Shida KO's Emi with the running knee strike and now it's a three count. That was a very entertaining match. Not much in the way of story here, which is kind of a running theme on this show (which is understandable because this is the first AEW show), but everyone - except maybe the timekeeper - looked good and got to show off their skills in a fast-paced and hard-hitting contest. Of course this was never going to be the best joshi match ever, that wasn't the idea anyway. The goal here was to introduce this style of wrestling to a wider audience, and they did a very nice job at that. The crowd really got into it once they saw what these ladies were capable of, and obviously Riho and Shida would get super over with the crowd once Dynamite got going later in the year. I give this match four and a half stars out of five. ****˝ I was debating between four and four and a half stars, but since these star ratings are completely arbitrary anyway and this is one of my favorite matches of the night, I figured I might as well go with the latter. The only real criterion for these ratings is how entertaining I found the match, and I definitely was entertained by this one. Alex Marvez talks about #AEWDON trending on Twitter and urges us to tell any lapsed wrestling fan friends of ours about AEW. I was basically a lapsed fan myself prior to the show because I'd been completely ground down by WWE's horseshit, and only really watched older stuff. Next up, we've got Cody vs. Dustin Rhodes. Brother vs. brother, generation vs. generation. The match Cody and Dustin wanted to do at Wrestlemania but never got the opportunity to, because according to Vince McMahon nobody would want to see it. Cody (as Stardust) and Dustin (as Goldust) did have a match at Fastlane 2015. Before the match, Goldust had a backstage segment with Dusty Rhodes (in Dusty's final storyline before his death) and told him he wasn't going to leave the ring until he managed to bring his brother Cody home. Sounds great! Real emotional stakes there! Wanna guess how that match went? If you guessed "Goldust won a short match with a rollup," congratulations! You've fully grasped the nuances of WWE booking.  In the promo package before the match, Cody talks about how he loves his brother but at some point, the dying animal has to be put down. Dustin, meanwhile, says he's seen it all in his 30 years in the ring and his legacy will be intact no matter what happens. This is very much billed as Dustin's one last ride before his retirement.  Of course, before we can get to the match, we've got an overblown Cody entrance to get through. There's a very HHH-esque throne on the entrance ramp, and Cody proceeds to smash it with a sledgehammer.  This was pretty silly but certainly went over well with the crowd. According to conventional wisdom, smaller promotions mocking WWE like this tends to look a tad bush-league, but WWE deserves every single bit of mockery and more so gently caress them right in the ear (besides, this was really the extent of it, as Cody finally got it out of his system). It also made some people extremely mad, as I discovered when I was looking through the Fire Pro Wrestling World Steam workshop for Cody CAWs (the one I'd downloaded in a bigger pack wasn't installing properly for some reason) and saw a comment from June 2019 with some guy talking about how great it was that he could finally squash Cody as HHH in Fire Pro. Yep, that'll definitely show him.  Dustin enters to a song that sounds a lot like Goldust's theme and then morphs into what is basically a Green Day song. That Goldust intro is no longer part of the theme, probably because it was too similar to... well, Goldust's theme from WWE. I quite liked it, but I'm not too mad about it being removed from the song. The referee for this match is Earl Hebner. Was this his only AEW appearance? He looks old as poo poo. The match hasn't even started and the crowd is already chanting "THIS IS AWESOME!"  Cody and Dustin start a bit tentatively, with Cody showing some arrogant mannerisms because he's the heel in this match. Cody hits the Rhodes uppercut and takes Dustin down with a tope suicida to the outside. Dustin fights back on the outside and hits a rolling senton off the apron, prompting a "WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?" from JR and probably a considerable number of viewers. I can say for sure that I didn't expect to see that from Dustin.  Dustin takes control with some punches and Cody escapes out of the ring. Cody heads to the crowd to collect his thoughts and take a swig of water before sliding back into the ring, and Brandi throws the water in Dustin's face. That swings the momentum back to Cody, who hits a picture-perfect powerslam. Dustin is able to fight back again and looks to be going for the Shattered Dreams, but Cody removes the middle turnbuckle pad and Dustin thinks twice about it. Dustin rushes at Cody but rams his face into the exposed turnbuckle, and Cody gets the advantage back as Dustin is sent to the outside. Brandi spears Dustin on the floor as JR goes "WHAT KIND OF FAMILY IS THIS?!"  Earl Hebner ejects Brandi with a vintage YOU'RE OUTTA HERE, and as Brandi argues with Hebner, Diamond Dallas Page comes out and carries Brandi to the back. Meanwhile, Dustin is bleeding. He is bleeding profusely. Holy poo poo, he is gushing. Cody proceeds to smear the blood on his chest.  Dustin is blinded by the blood in his eyes so Cody's got the upper hand, and the blood is just staining the mat at this point. Good lord, that is a lot of loving blood. Cody continues the offense, and this looks to be just a matter of time as the blood POURS from Dustin's head onto the canvas like someone turned on a faucet. Curbstomp by Cody gets a two-count and OH GOD DON'T ZOOM IN ON THAT AUGGH I've seen plenty of deathmatches and assorted blood and guts style wrestling stuff over the years, but this is still pretty hard to watch at times. Dustin hits a powerslam out of nowhere and the crowd explodes. Cody manages to get the Figure Four locked in and screams at Dustin to tap, but Dustin keeps fighting and reverses the hold.  That ring looks like a Hotline Miami mission just took place in it. Cody tries to use his weightlifting belt as a weapon but Hebner takes it away from him, now Dustin has the belt and pulls down the back of Cody's tights. Cody's quite literally showing rear end now, and Dustin spanks him with the belt. CODE RED by Dustin! Where did that come from? The crowd is going absolutely ballistic. TOP ROPE ARM DRAG by Dustin, Cross Rhodes, Cody kicks out! Dustin goes for another Cross Rhodes but Cody kicks him in the balls, Disaster Kick, Cross Rhodes and that'll be... no, Dustin kicks out!  Dustin lands a headbutt and goes for the Cross Rhodes again, he hits it! Cody once again kicks out and the crowd is losing their minds. Some are chanting "THIS IS AWESOME" while others look extremely worried for Dustin's wellbeing. The brothers trade punches in the middle of the ring, BICYCLE KICK by Cody, both guys take each other down! Cody kicks out at 2.5. Cody goes for... hm, that kinda looked like a Vertebreaker? Dustin is down on the mat, Cody picks him up and hits another Cross Rhodes and covers, Earl Hebner counts to three and this match is over! What a match. Amazing. Cody heads towards the ramp but looks back at Dustin and returns into the ring. Dustin backs away from Cody because he thinks Cody's come to beat him up some more. The crowd chants "THANK YOU DUSTIN" as Cody picks up a mic and tells Dustin he doesn't get to retire here. Cody needs to ask him a favor.  Cody talks about the upcoming Fight for the Fallen in Jacksonville. He is booked in a tag match with a partner of his choosing against the Young Bucks. But he doesn't need a partner. He doesn't need a friend. He needs his older brother, he says as his voice cracks.  The brothers hug, the fans chant Dusty's name, and there is not a dry eye in the building as Cody and Dustin leave together.  Excalibur trying to wipe away tears underneath his mask is one hell of a visual, and I'm not ashamed to admit I had to wipe some away myself when I watched this live. What can I say about this match? I had no real expectations because I didn't know what these two were actually capable of, but they absolutely tore the house down. I had genuinely forgotten wrestling could even be like this, packed with so much emotion and telling such a beautiful story even when the match itself is this brutal bloodbath. I was already into the show, but this right here is the moment I became a wrestling fan again. Five stars. One of the best matches I have ever seen. ***** With that, I think it's time for a break. Of course, we've still got plenty to come, including the championship belt presentation and two great matches... DMorbid fucked around with this message at 14:08 on Dec 6, 2020 |
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Dec 6, 2020 12:56
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Let's Watch: AEW Double or Nothing 2019, Part 3 (FINAL) Before we get to the AEW championship presentation, the announcers recap the Casino Battle Royale from the preshow. That, of course, was won by "Hangman" Adam Page, who will be facing the winner of tonight's Kenny Omega/Chris Jericho main event at All Out in August. Guest ring announcer Jack Whitehall introduces the man who will present the title belt - Bret "Hitman" Hart!  Bret enters to a pretty decent knockoff of his classic theme. The belt was originally supposed to be presented by Ric Flair, but he had to cancel due to a health issue so Bret is here instead. I think this is an improvement, frankly. Bret is very glad to be here for a "sold out World Championship Wrestling event" and doesn't quite remember when All Out is actually going to be, but that's okay. It's been a while, like he says. Bret invites Adam Page to join him in the festivities. Hangman comes out to join the presentation, and as he's shaking hands with Bret we hear the fart synths of MJF's theme.  MJF comes out and does his thing, at one point telling Bret to look out because there's a fan coming out to attack him, which is of course a reference to the idiot who attacked Bret at the WWE HOF event a couple of months prior. MJF calls the audience jealous nimrods. Nimrod is a very solid insult and should be used more often. MJF talks trash to Hangman and says a horse can't be the face of AEW. Now, I'm at least 80% sure that Adam Page is a man, not a horse, but I may be mistaken. MJF says race horses that break their legs get taken out back and shot, alluding to Page's kayfabe leg injury suffered at the hands of PAC in England. MJF's getting nuclear heat from the crowd. He suggests Page winning the battle royal was a fluke and that he should relinquish the title shot to a real man. Sure, give it to Steven Regal, that sounds good to me. MJF briefly starts calling himself the best there is, the best there was and the best there ever will be, but realizes mid-sentence that oh wait, that catchphrase sucks. No, Maxwell Jacob Friedman is better than you and you know it. He can't quite finish that sentence either because Hangman takes a swing at him. MJF calls Hangman "Seabiscuit" and offers him a sugar cube. MJF turns to leave, but is interrupted by Jungle Boy walking down the ramp.  MJF would love to wrestle a pre-pubescent teenager (his words) but is too busy at the moment and walks off, only to be interrupted again. This time it's... oh gently caress, it's Jimmy Havoc. gently caress Jimmy Havoc. Putting that aside for a moment, this early AEW stuff is really weird to watch because they were clearly in that awkward phase where they hadn't quite figured themselves out yet, what with babyface Jimmy Havoc and Jungle Boy showing up in a world title segment. Sure, it makes sense here because these guys were the final four in the battle royal and three of them are pissed at MJF, but it's still pretty strange to see.  Havoc (ugh) and Jungle Boy haul MJF off, and Bret shows off the belt for the first time. Big Plat in the house. Apparently, Bret fell off the stage at some point while heading to the back. The poor guy never has any luck whatsoever. At least he wasn't injured.  LUCHA BROS. CHALLENGERS. CERO MIEDO. MEET US IN THE... no, that doesn't quite work. We get a Young Bucks/Lucha Bros promo package, showing off the Lucha Bros' attack on the Bucks at the AEW press conference to set up this match. The Bucks say they're slightly worried about ring rust because they haven't wrestled in a while whereas Penta and Fenix have been active all that time, which is going to be one of the big storylines of this match. The Bucks aren't too concerned because they've been doing this for a long time and are very good at what they do. We then see the Bucks attacking the Lucha Bros at an AAA show to win their tag titles, which are on the line in this match. Let's go.  Pentagon Jr. and Rey Fenix are wearing masks on top of their masks, because why not. Cero Miedo means no fear, as Alex Marvez helpfully translates for us. Marvez also informs us that when the Lucha Bros were kids, they'd wrestle each other around the house and wear underwear on their heads as masks. I'm not sure if we really needed to hear that detail, but that's why they pay Alex Marvez the big bucks. I was vaguely familiar with Penta and Fenix prior to this show, but I don't think I'd ever seen one of their matches before.  Hey, it's the Flying Elvises! We hear the big introductions and even a Mills Lane style "I want a good clean fight" pre-match speech from referee Rick Knox. Have we seen that on later shows? I quite liked that, it adds to the big match atmosphere and sports feel.  Matt Jackson interrupts Pentagon's Cero Miedo sequence, the fiend (not to be confused with The Fiend). Penta gets it done eventually and tags in his younger brother, Nick tags himself in and Fenix armdrags the two of them. Some impressive action by Fenix and Nick there, the two trade shoulder blocks and start slapping each other in the center of the ring. Brainbreaker by the Lucha Bros who are on fire here, more double team moves and a cover, but Nick kicks out. As Alex Marvez hypes up the upcoming Fyter Fest, Nick takes down both Bros with a tierras/arm drag combination and tags Matt in. Gorilla press to Fenix, spear to Penta, Matt takes control of the match and tags Nick back in. Penta talks trash to Matt, and while I'm not super fluent in Spanish I definitely got the gist of that. Excalibur describes it as Pentagon "insulting Mama Buck," which is the nice way to put it. Nick accidentally stomps on Matt as Penta pushes him into harms way, but the Bucks recover nicely from the miscommunication and stay on the attack. Another miscue gives Penta the opportunity to monkeyflip Nick onto Matt in the corner, and now it's Fenix in the ring again. Escalera and HOLY poo poo WHAT WAS THAT, I can't even describe what just happened there, I just saw this big blur of springboard jumps with a headscissors at the end. I don't think the laws of physics apply to Fenix. Penta now working on Matt but eats a flipping stunner, both men down, Fenix is tagged in and knocks Nick down on the apron, Matt does the Locomotion followed by the Sharpshooter on Fenix, another Northern Lights to Penta. Nick with a huge slingshot facebuster to Fenix, followed by a moonsault off the apron to Pentagon. That was another completely insane sequence, followed by a lariat/bulldog combo. The Bucks have the Bros in stereo Sharpshooters now, but the Bros make it to the ropes. I have no idea who the legal men are at this point. 450 splash but Penta breaks up the pin, gets thrown out of the ring for his efforts. Running buckle bomb/enzuigiri combo on Fenix, who is now set up on the top rope...  Paying homage to the Motor City Machine Guns there. Superkicks to everyone, Fenix and Matt take each other down with double clotheslines. Matt and Penta on the apron, exchanging strikes, I'm sure this won't lead into any crazy poo poo. They knock each other down but I don't think this is over yet. Fenix is on the apron now and HOLY gently caress  I should probably consider switching to GIFs. Penta jumps off Fenix's back to hit a destroyer on Matt on the apron, and Fenix immediately follows up with a slingshot destroyer of his own on Nick for a two count. Fenix dives off Penta's shoulders to hit a plancha on the Bucks on the outside, more big double team action and down go both Bucks again. Escalera to a Senton Atomico by Fenix for another two count. Penta and Nick are the legal men now, Penta looking to break Nick's arm but Matt comes to the rescue with a superkick. Matt with the half and half on Penta, Fenix goes for the flying nothing and is met by stereo superkicks, big boot by Matt in the corner, sets up Fenix on the top rope once more... shades of El Generico as Matt plants him with the BRAINBUSTAAAAHHHH! Bang for your Buck but Penta kicks out! Another double team coming up, assisted package piledriver for another near fall! The Bucks go for the Meltzer Driver but are stopped in their tracks, Penta snaps Matt's arm! Matt somehow survives that but eats a Penta Driver. Meanwhile, Fenix has murdered Nick on the stage and Matt is alone in there with both Lucha Bros, he's not looking too good. Fenix sets him up on the top rope and motions for the end, but Matt jumps down and grabs him into a tombstone position, Nick has returned and....  MELTZER DRIVER! Penta is nowhere to be found after a superkick from Nick, Matt covers Fenix and Rick Knox counts to three. The winners of this match and still AAA World Tag Team Champions - the Young Bucks! That was just crazy, balls to the wall action all the way from the opening bell. The Bucks maybe suffering from ring rust didn't come into play as much as I expected, and in general there wasn't much in the way of storytelling here. That's why I don't think this match is as good as, say, the Bucks vs. Omega/Hangman from this year, but it certainly was entertaining as all hell. Four and a half stars. ****˝  It's time for our main event as Kenny Omega takes on Chris Jericho for a shot at the AEW title at All Out.  This promo video is pretty great, as we see Jericho training at an MMA gym while Omega goes for the Rocky IV training montage in the Winnipeg wilderness. Jericho's entrance features a bunch of wrestlers cosplaying as his previous gimmicks. Was that Orange Cassidy with The List?  We see the Lionheart, the List and the Light-up Jacket, but then it's time for Judas to start playing and the man himself to walk out. There is a Cracker Barrel, uh, barrel in the ring for some reason.  Jericho is one of my all-time favorite wrestlers and one of the reasons I bought this PPV. Finding out what a stupid idiot chud he was in real life sucked really bad and I kinda wish I didn't enjoy his work as much as I do, but there you go.  Kenny's entrance gear is probably a reference to something but I don't know what. I kinda like the long version of Battle Cry that plays during his entrance here. The lengthy intro adds to the Big Match Feel(tm), I think. Battle Cry was written and performed by LittleVMills, a Canadian musician who does a lot of metal covers of video game songs and such. Here he is collaborating with Mick Gordon. This, of course, isn't the first time Jericho and Omega are facing each other, as Omega defeated Jericho at the Tokyo Dome with an One Winged Angel on a chair. Jericho has trained hard to avoid a repeat, and he has promised to introduce a new finisher named the Judas Effect tonight. Before we get to the match, someone needs to to get that Cracker Barrel out of there because this isn't a Cracker Barrel Clash. It turns out getting a large barrel through the ropes is a bit of a struggle for the ref and the ring crew worker, but Jericho channels his inner Donkey Kong to assist them.  I'm sorry. Okay then, now we're ready to go. JR calls Jericho "smart and well-read," which I found mildly amusing. Omega gets the early advantage with chops and elbow strikes and goes for the V-Trigger, but Jericho dodges it and Omega knees the turnbuckle instead. Omega goes for a huracanrana but Jericho catches him and locks in the Walls. Omega has to scramble to the ropes and to the outside. Jericho follows with a low dropkick through the ropes, knocking Omega down. Jericho knocks Omega's head into the timekeeper's table and rings the bell, declaring himself the victor. Omega fights back, the two brawl on the outside and Jericho gets dumped on the timekeeper's table now. Omega goes for maybe a moonsault off the barricade but nearly loses his balance, and it looks like Jericho saves Omega from falling off before actually pushing him off and into the crowd. Jericho picks up a video camera from one of the camera crew as Excalibur calls him Generico a couple of times. Well, have you ever seen Chris Jericho and El Generico in the same place at the same time? Omega spits water into the camera lens and lands a missile dropkick to take Jericho down. We've got playoff rules going on here so Paul Turner isn't bothering to count these two out. Back in the ring now, Omega with You Can't Escape and a moonsault press for a two count. Jericho shoves Omega's face into the turnbuckle to regain the advantage. Jericho with a missile dropkick of his own for another two count. Strike exchange in the middle of the ring, Omega gets the upper hand but runs into a massive lariat for another two count. Omega's nose is now bleeding and Jericho immediately targets it, but Omega takes him down with a huracanrana. I think that's a legit broken nose as well and if I recall correctly, Jericho did his best to protect it for the rest of the match. Jericho grabs a table but Omega kicks it into his face and flattens Jericho with a tope con giro, using the table to knock him down. Omega places the table on top of Jericho.  BAH GAWD! I didn't notice until now that Jericho's elbow seems to have hit Kenny's face on the landing there, which I'm sure didn't help matters in terms of his injured nose. The table is somehow still intact and Kenny sets it up. Both men back in the ring, Kotaro Crusher, hooks the leg for another two count. That nose is looking pretty bad.  Kenny goes for a Snap Dragon but kicks Jericho in the back of the head instead and follows up with a V-Trigger in the corner, driving Jericho's face into the turnbuckle padding. Jericho now up top, Omega goes for a super back suplex... oh, he's got the hands locked, goes for an avalanche Snap Dragon but Jericho blocks it, Omega finally lands a huge back suplex off the top and both men come crashing down. Omega covers, Jericho kicks out once again. Both men slow to their feet, but Omega gets there first and goes for another V-Trigger, Lionsault, Omega gets the knees up, V-TRIGGER, goes for the One Winged Angel but Jericho gets out and reverses into a release German suplex, another Lionsault and ugh, that looked bad.  Just landed right on Omega's head there. I've helpfully included a timestamp so you can watch it yourself, that was absolutely on purpose and I most definitely didn't accidentally leave the Fite player controls onscreen. Usually when someone goes for the Lionsault, I'm worried for their head and neck as my mind flashes back to Hayabusa's horrific injury back in 2001, but here it seems Kenny was out of position and Jericho landed awkwardly on top of him. A second Lionsault, this one lands properly and Omega kicks out at two. The Codebreaker is blocked, V-Trigger, hooks him up for the Tiger Driver '98 but Jericho's not taking that bump. Instead, he backdrops Kenny over the ropes and through the table that was set up earlier! I know this is playoff rules, but shouldn't throwing someone through a table be a DQ? Not complaining, just an observation. Then again, Kenny already used the table as a weapon before and Paul Turner didn't seem to mind, so whatever. Kenny gets back onto the apron, tries to get in the ring but Jericho lands the triangle dropkick to take him down again. Meanwhile, the Fite player decides it doesn't want to load the rest of the VOD.  Okay, we're back. The player doesn't seem to like pausing and rewinding. Kenny and Jericho are on the top rope, Jericho perhaps going for a superplex but Omega knocks him down, diving forearm countered into the Codebreaker! Kenny barely kicks out and Jericho can't believe it. Yes, JR, Jericho's looking all puffy from all those strikes to the face. Definitely for that reason. Omega fights his way back to his feet, SNAP DRAGON! Another one! Omega has gone through untold amounts of punishment but somehow keeps going. V-TRIGGER! Goes for the One Winged Angel, Jericho rolls through and goes for the Walls, Omega counters and hits a sloppy-looking Tiger Driver '98 for another nearfall.  That looked a bit wrong, like Jericho was expecting a normal Tiger Driver instead of this variation. V-Trigger, Jericho blocks it and locks in the Walls in the center of the ring. Omega tries to make it to the ropes but Jericho pulls him back into the center and applies the Liontamer!  I will always mark out for the Liontamer even when it's not particularly crisp. Omega manages to power out of the hold and knocks Jericho silly with another V-Trigger. One Winged Angel, Jericho reverses... oof, that looked really bad.  JR calls that the ugliest DDT he's ever seen. Kinda looks like Jericho was going for a powerslam or something. Omega kicks out of the pin attempt and makes his way back up, but Jericho hits an enzuigiri to take him down again. Jericho goes for another Lionsault but Kenny catches him in the OWA position, Jericho again counters into a DDT but this time without the botch. Codebreaker takes Kenny down and is sold like death, both men struggling to their feet, JUDAS EFFECT!  This finish seemed a bit abrupt at the time, largely because it was the first time anyone saw the Judas Effect and it hadn't yet been established as this insta-death finisher. Especially the live crowd seemed a bit confused at first, but they get over it pretty quickly and I think some of the fans are singing along to Judas after the match. I give this match three and a half stars out of five. It did its job, got the story across and had plenty to enjoy, but there were a several major botches that could've ended really badly and hurt the flow of the match as they had to set up the spots again. Kenny's nose injury would've also affected the quality of the match to some degree even though he did a fine job working through it. Still a good match, but things didn't quite line up on this night and these two can do better. ***˝ Post-match, Jericho grabs a mic and tells us how great he is and that he's gonna be the first AEW champion. As Jericho claims he's the one that made AEW happen and demands thanks from the fans, the crowd explodes for a completely unrelated reason as Jon Moxley makes his way through the stands and into the ring. Jericho turns around and is shocked to see Mox, screaming "WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?" Nice little callback to their feud in WWE a few years earlier.  Leading up to the show, there had been some rumblings about a possible Moxley appearance, but those were largely dismissed as wishful thinking. Mox had let his WWE contract expire the previous month, fed up with the terrible booking and storylines he constantly found himself trying to fight against. Eventually, he decided it wasn't worth it and decided to quit once his contract ran out. For all WWE knew, he was retiring. Mox actually showing up at Double or Nothing was a huge "holy poo poo" moment and a big deal in general, as evidenced by the crowd losing their minds upon seeing him (Mox was so ground down by WWE's bullshit that he thought the fans might reject him, seeing him as that lovely Dean Ambrose geek). Moxley hits the Paradigm Shift on Jericho and another one on Paul Turner as the crowd goes absolutely ballistic. Kenny is still conscious, so I think we know what's coming next. Mox goes for the Paradigm Shift but Kenny fights back and they spill to the outside, now brawling among the crowd who are still going apeshit over what they're seeing. The brawl continues and they find the giant novelty poker chips (which Kenny apparently demanded at the last minute, so they ended up costing AEW a lot more than they normally would've). Both men get on top of the stack of chips, PARADIGM SHIFT!  Mox isn't done and slams Omega off the stack of chips! Kenny comes crashing down and Mox takes in the cheers as the show ends. Look at this guy, he's loving it.  My overall grade for Double or Nothing 2019 is an A. If I wanted to be objective, I could drop that down to an A- because there were some botches and production gaffes on this show, but I'm not going to do that. For me, Double or Nothing was the show that made wrestling fun again. Great matches and a huge moment at the end, one of the hottest crowds ever, what's not to enjoy? This was the show that turned me into a wrestling fan again, and that is far more important than some rough edges here and there. I'm not sure what I should watch next time, but I did notice Impact had some old TNA PPVs uploaded so maybe I could check one of those out. I think their old weekly PPVs might also still be on YouTube or Dailymotion... DMorbid fucked around with this message at 14:20 on Dec 9, 2020 |
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Dec 9, 2020 13:44
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| # ¿ May 18, 2024 07:23 |
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duckdealer posted:Also does anyone else remember the Bucks building up a secret new finisher on BTE in the weeks before Double or Nothing? That's a thing that happened and I didn't just dream it, right?
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Dec 9, 2020 14:18
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