Professional Wrestling

Sami explains why he did what he did at HIAC and it’s absolutely believable and reasonable:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFHmX4_uduc

1 Like

I’m glad they are working the angle like this instead if having him do an awkward 180 with his personality. Altough I still don’t think his alliance with Owen’s will last, just look at Owen’s best friend stabbing record. :stuck_out_tongue:

Their dynamic now isn’t too different than what it was on ROH (it’s probably even more healthy in this iteration). But I agree just because WWE is usually adverse to the slow burn. I do wanna week them against the New Day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZgZEgCkrs0

TLC Was better than it had any reason to be.

Spoilahs

Kane Destroying Braun was amazing and the AJ vs. Balor fight was something out of Wrestlemania. Also I became an Emma mark out of her losing to Asuka, hope they both get a push.

Tweet from @jorge_inzulza: https://twitter.com/jorge_inzulza/status/922491288452288513

Hey @OSWreview is this accurate? https://twitter.com/jorge_inzulza/status/922487470788370433/photo/1

1 Like

Was it a good match? I am a hardcore Asuka mark after some of my kids got into it.

It wasn’t an NXT Asuka match, but it was all right. It should have been a squash, but they don’t debut people as killing machines in WWE anymore. See also Shinsuke’s debut match.

That depends. It’s definitely not against established talent, but they do build up people in their debut or redebut as monsters. See Braun Strowman and Nia Jax being fed jobbers for multiple months after the Brand split last year.

The Emma-Asuka match was alright. I still think for Asuka being declared an unbeatable murder machine her matches as a whole are too competitive. That has been true in NXT too though.

1 Like

Thats the thing with Asuka. She was built like a brick privy in NXT and for her to not have that as much on the main show is a bit of a let down. I mean we know shes good, same for Shunsuke and so many others, why do they have to start at the bottom all over again.

Because it undervalues the WWE wrestlers, from their perspective. If they want to present themselves as a company where all of the best wrestlers go then it would not benefit them if any famous talent from another promotion immediately destroys their roster. Having said that, feeding her Emma first makes it so that Asuka has an upward trajectory in the eyes of those that are unaware/uncaring of NXT.

The problem is that Emma has been a walking punchline on Raw. She’s as expendable as they come on the roster, so Asuka should kill her because “No one is ready for Asuka.” Either that, or they need to be given like 15 minutes to have a proper killer match which Asuka clearly wins in the end, and Emma can look good in the process for putting up a fight. 5 minute back and forth matches aren’t what’s needed to establish her out of the gate.

Bought my ticket for WrestleKindom just now. Still need to find out where I can get tickets for New Year’s Dash. I’m going to Japan Baybeeeeeeeeee!

Edit: New Year’s Dash tickets go on sale on November 10th.

Also, poster:

2 Likes

Congrats, that’s going to be awesome!

1 Like

Man, NXT has a better woman’s division than the rest of wwe combined. I can’t wait until they start calling more of them up. I almost feel like they should end 205 Live, reintegrate those Wrestlers into Smackdown and then let the women’s division have their own show, considering how they are already separated from the male roster.

Emma, Darren Young and Summer Rae have all been released by WWE. Darren Young and Summer Rae are hardly surprising considering neither have been featured on TV for about a year. Emma however is rather out of left field, particularly when they had her be Asuka’s opponent for her debut. I guess they didn’t like her performance in that match in addition to the failure that was the “Emmalina” project.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcxPCrBa4zY

Watching NJPW Power Struggle live right now. Great event so far with a far better match between Kenny Oemga and Trent Beretta than I expected. I guess I underestimated Beretta’s in-ring ability

However, far bigger than that are the implications for WrestleKingdom which were announced.

  1. The Young Bucks have challenged Roppongi 3K for the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag-Team Championship.
  2. There will be a fatal four-way match for the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship between Marty Scurll, Will Ospreay, Hiromu Takahashi and KUSHIDA.
  3. After Omega beat Beretta, he had a little promo where, in japanese, he talked all about how nobody is ready to challenge him anymore. Then the lights went out and Chris Motherfucking Jericho shows up on the titantron and challenges Omega for the IWGP United States Championship at WrestleKingdom!

And now there is still Ibushi vs. Tanahashi on the card.

Edit: And that match was excellent.

  1. And now “Switchblade” Jay White returns and challenges Tanahashi for WK.

Oh yeah, and they announced another NJPW event in Long Beach in March.

Edit 2:

  1. Apparently after the event Cody confronted Ibushi due to Ibushi’s loss. They WK is going to have them in a match for the ROH World Championship.
1 Like

I finally got round to watching the end of Lucha Underground Season 3.

Why did it take me so long? SPOILERS!!!

This is like the perfect example of how knowing how something would end really, really ruined my enjoyment of the show. I accidentally read a wikipedia page that revealed who would be the reigning champion at the end of season 3. And that meant, when it came to all the championship matches in the second half of the seasons, I pretty much knew which way it would go. I even knew who would win various other matches that led up to the climax of the season, just by logically working out who would need to do what to get the final bout I knew was coming.

If this would have been pure sport, I probably wouldn’t have watched it at all, knowing the end, but then sport isn’t typically filmed way in advance, then edited, then shown on a massive nine month delay (or whatever) so the chances of such spoilers wouldn’t be there. That’s why sport really must always be live.

And if it was pure fiction, I would have got some enjoyment about seeing where things were going, and how they got there. Like watching a TV show adaptation of a book I’ve already read. But with tournaments and sports there is more of a set structure, and the moments of drama are different.

At every moment of all the main event matches, as the three count started, I always knew either A. the person I knew would win would kick out or B. the loser would lose right then. It literally made every count have zero “who will take this” tension and only “will this be the end of the match/this can’t be the end of the match”.

Thankfully I still had all the other matchups to enjoy, and some of the shit that went down in Ultima Lucha 3 was crazyballs.

But, seriously, fuck spoilers.

Aw yeah baby, after the speculation that this was the last season of Lucha Underground we got news that season 4 will soon be upon us!

1 Like