Razor Ramon was really big when I was a kid watching wrestling. I liked him a lot more than most of the other wrestlers. TIL his real name was also Scott. RIP.
The thing about Hall is that while he had his demons, he wasn’t a selfish prick in the ring. He often went out of his way to put young talent over. The video above is a perfect example with a very young Hiroshi Tanahashi in 2001. Hall decided on this finish by himself because he saw the talent Tana had, and Tana of course went on to become one of the all-time greats. He did similar things for a young Chris Jericho, and most famously for Sean Waltman who became the 1-2-3 Kid because of his upset win over Hall and built an entire career from it.
While there were a lot of people in the business who would dictate finishes to put themselves over, Hall knew that fostering the next generation was something that helped everybody. This is a primary reason why Hall is respected so much today.
P.S.: I keep repeating it, but it is weird how WWE and WCW back in the day warped perspective. Because Hall stood next to Kevin Nash so long, you start to think Hall was “normal size” when the guy was above 2m tall (or 6 foot 7 inches for you barbarians).
It’s a JRPG like Earthbound style. Officially licensed and everything. I would have thought it was a fanmade thing like Barkley Shut up and Jam Gaiden.
EDIT: I’ve been informed that the company making this game is high on the NFTs. So sad.
SPOILERS FOR NEW JAPAN CUP
So I watched the New Japan Cup today, totally expecting Hiromu to lose to EVIL in the main event because “lol, House of Torture shenanigans! EVIL’s not going to lose to his Kohai!” And as expected, it is a typical EVIL match. Lots of outside interference from Dick Togo, but surprisingly not anybody else. Bullet Club had just kicked out Guerilla’s of Destiny and Jado, who was betrayed by Gedo and they were partners for 30 years. After that there was even more Bullet Club shenanigans than usual.
Anyhow, back to Hiromu vs. EVIL. Hiromu hits the Timebomb. Unfortunately that move has been somewhat devalued and EVIL kicks out. Then Hiromu rolls EVIL up but Dick Togo has the ref distracted and even by count 7 Red Shoes isn’t looking at what is actually happening in the ring. EVIL tries to engineer yet another ref bump but only manages to push Togo off the apron. Hiromu hits EVIL with EVIL’s own finisher “EVERYTHING IS EVIL”. I think that is obviously a false finish as nobody ever wins with his opponents move. Ref Counts 1, Ref Counts 2, Ref counts 3. WTF?! Hiromu just won! And not only did he win, he beat EVIL with EVIL’s own move!
Hiromu was already really flying high after a ridiculous encounter with Minoru Suzuki earlier in the tournament where they turned each other’s chests into hamburger meat. However, I did not expect this. Hiromu now has to face Shingo in the next round.
NJPW wrestler Great-O-Khan saved a little girl, whose mother was going to the bathroom, from being obducted at a train station a few days ago. He single-handedly subdued the abductor, made sure the little girl was okay, offered her pancakes, and introduced himself in kayfabe.
2 Likes
Despite how decidedly bland WWE has been recently, Wrestlemania was really really good. It may have actually lived up to its own hype and been stupendous (other than a few duds and not being able to find any time for Finn Balor or Ricochet to defend their championships in 12 hours of wrestling).
Wrestlemania spoilers
Night One
The Usos vs. Shinsuke Nakamura and Rick Boogs got cut short beacuse Boogs blew his knee/quad lifting both Usos.
Drew McIntyre vs. Happy Corbin sure did happen. McIntyre became the first person to kick out of the End of Days and cut two of the ring ropes with his sword, Angela.
The Mysterios vs. The Miz and Logan Paul made me upset. Not because it was a bad match, but because I have to admit that Logan Paul just gets professional wrestling and is really good at it. He’s got the build for it, apparently has an amateur wrestling background, and is a natural heel. He’s got a very punchable face, he has years of experience making people hate him, he actually works the hard camera, and can perfectly time heel moves like doing Eddie Guerrero’s shimmy before doing a frog splash on a Mysterio. He’s a natural, and I hate it.
Becky Lynch vs. Bianca Belair. Bianca had a fantastic intro care of Texas Southern University. This may have been the match of the night and was a rare example of A) WWE doing long-term storytelling correctly and B) WWE and the fans agreeing about who should be a star. Bianca did take one very stiff kick to the face, but she seems to be okay.
Seth Rollins vs. Cody Rhodes was another surprising match. Not because it was good (they’re both very good at what they do) but because of how much of Cody’s AEW character they let him keep. I was gobsmacked to hear “wrestling has more than one royal family”. He’s still 100% The Codylander, and the announcers even referenced one of his AEW promos. Building their closest competitor seems to have made Vince see just how valuable Cody is because he was booked to look like an absolute star.
Charlotte Flair vs. Rhonda Rousey was meh. Charlotte’s character hasn’t changed at all in years and is quite stale at this point. Rhonda talked herself into a corner by saying she was going to rip Charlotte’s arm off, but let go of the armbar after the ref took a hit. There’s absolutely no reason for her character to have let go. There were also several wardrobe malfunctions.
Kevin Owens vs. Stone Cold Steve Austin surprisingly good. At 57 years old and after 19 years of retirement, Austin can still go (and so can his beer thrower) and Kevin Owens is a super safe worker, so he was in good hands. It went almost 20 minutes and Austin is alcoholic Popeye; he got better with each beer he “drank”. After saving WWE, Stone Cold deserved to end his in-ring career in his home state and the city where he had his first match.
Night Two
RK-Bro vs. Street Prophets vs. Alpha Academy was a banger of an opening match. Montez Ford has the it factor; he can talk the talk outside the ring and walk the walk inside it, his face is super expressive, and every time Montez Ford is in the air he jumps so high that I’m not convinced that he isn’t made out of springs. It’s weird to say it, but Randy Orton had the worst RKO/cutter of the weekend. It wasn’t bad, the others were just so good, especially Riddle’s springboard RKO to win the match. There was also good sportsmanship after the match, which you never see in WWE.
Bobby Lashley vs. Omos
Omos has the look that Vince loves (he’s billed at 7’ 3", 400lbs), but he can’t talk and he can’t wrestle. He’s been booked very strong recently, so Lashley looks strong beating him on his comeback.
Johnny Knoxville (and the rest of the Jackass crew) vs. Sami Zayn was comedy wrestling gold. They went pure Looney Tunes and it was all the better for it. The crowd was completely into it and so was I. Wee Man bodyslamming Sami was an absolute delight, as was Johnny’s groin-based offense. I wish they’d done this before Johnny was in his 50s, but it was still good, clean, stupid fun and Sami got pinned by a giant mouse trap. Every match shouldn’t be like this, but having the variety makes everything better. Even Michael Cole pulled the stick out of his ass and sounded like he was having fun. 10/10, I was thoroughly sports entertained.
Naomi and Sasha Banks vs. Carmella and Queen Zelina vs. Liv Morgan and Rhea Ripley vs. Natalya and Shayna Baszler. WWE remembered they have a women’s tag team division! Sasha Banks won a Wrestlemania match! I hope they actually keep some/all of these teams together.
Edge vs. AJ Styles
WWE never lets AJ do what he’s really good at at the big shows. He does high-flying, fast-paced matches very very well, but they insist on knock-down-drag-out fights. The match was fine, but just fine.
The New Day vs. Shemus and Ridge Holland. The New Day must have done something to piss Vince off, because they’ve been getting shafted hard recently. Big E lost over and over in his three months as champion before getting fed to Brock Lesner just like Kofi was.
Now they got squashed in minutes by the same person that broke Big E’s neck four weeks ago. Ridge Holland was a shit wrestler then and he isn’t any better now. “Toss a guy out of the ring” is about as basic a maneuver as there is and he managed to fuck it up. His character is sold as “too dangerous for rugby”, and I don’t believe a word of it is fiction. He’s not safe to be in the ring with.
This match was cut from Night One and should have stayed that way because it honked and was the only real stinker of the weekend.
WWE has also managed to turn Pete Dunne, whose character was a frightening joint-manipulator/finger breaker into Scrappy Doo.
Pat McAfee vs. Austin Theory (and then Vince McMahon)
Pat clearly loves professional wrestling. He’s been a delight at the announcer’s table and got to live out a boyhood dream here. The fact that Vince paid for him to use Seven Nation Army for his intro shows just how much he likes Pat. Theory sold his ass off and Pat looked like a million bucks. Michael Cole was also over the moon for this win.
Vince has no business inserting himself into matches anymore. It worked in the 2000s, but it doesn’t now. He’s in fantastic shape, especially for a man in his mid-70s (he can squat nearly 1000lbs!), but he can’t go in the ring like he used to with Stone Cold.
Stone Cold comes out. Has beers with everybody. Stuns everybody and everybody except Vince sold the hell out of their stunners. Theory went into orbit and McAfee fountained more than HHH. Austin clearly had a ball being back and Pat drinking his beer laid-out on the floor was low-key hilarious.
Brock Lesner vs. Roman Reigns
Two dudes spamming their finishers…again. Roman’s better now than when they were trying to shove his face character down people’s throats, and Canadian tuxedo Lesner has been fun, but this was just every other match they’ve ever had; it was boring. They’re both good performers, but WWE doesn’t let them perform and doesn’t portray anyone else as close to their levels. Three celebrities, three non-wrestlers put on better matches than this.
EDIT: Wrestlemania was so so good, but Raw the next night was just a big ol’ steaming curler of a turd. The last ten minutes of the show was a fucking quarterly earnings report! How is this even made by the same company? I want to be surprised, but this is how things have been for years.
2 Likes
Rampage Spoilers
Rampage Spoilers
Holy Shit, Wheeler Yuta kicked out of the Paradigm Shift! Twice! He still didn’t win against Moxley, but man, he is getting up there.
Also, in just a couple of minutes NJPW Hyper Battle will start, with an IWGP World Heavyweight title match between Okada and New Japan Cup winner Zach Sabre Jr. who really impressed again and had a really, really good tournament.
Oh yeah, and NJPW’s subscription service will begin hosting AEW Dynamite and AEW Rampage with japanese commentary, which is kind of weird considering DDT just recently announced a partnership with AEW so I would have expected that to show up on DDT’s Wrestle Universe service.
That is how you build up young talent. He’s going to be a star in a few years, and I’m very much looking forward to it. I do wish AEW would stop with the crimson mask, though.
Raw was actually sports entertaining this week! They’re clearly strapping a rocket to Cody; he got double pyro and is allowed to say no-no words like ‘belt’ and ‘wrestler’. I don’t know where they’re going with this Kevin Owens and Ezekiel/Elias truther conspiracy, but it’s been very fun so far. I’d be very happy if Sami Zayn ends up helping him expose the truth and they have another tag team run. Montez Ford continues to look like he’s made from Tigger-stuff.
It was also nice not to have Corey Graves on commentary tonight.
AEW and NJPW have just announced a joint PPV, booking the United Center in Chicago for June 26th!
I named the venue because it is probably the biggest arena AEW has run so far, if not by capacity then by name recognition. For the announcement they had the president of NJPW in the arena and Jay White showed up, announcing that Bullet Club and the Undisputed Elite are working together.
Also, Adam Cole vs. Tomohiro Ishii coming up on Rampage. Word of mouth is that it is an excellent match.
1 Like
Danielson Vs. Okada, inject that directly into my veins.
The match that that popped into my head and I kind of want is BCC vs. LIJ in a trios match. This gives us the quasi-matchups of Naito vs. Danielson, Shingo vs. Moxley and Hiromu vs. Yuta, plus mix and match. Shingo and Moxley actually have a long history, as on the indies they used to be teamed up with Shingo being Mox’s enforcer (as if that was necessary) and they also had a matchup in Mox’s G1 run.
However, Danielson has many suiters. Besides the “big money match” against Okada, there is also a longstanding “promised match” against Zack Sabre Jr. over the WON “Bryan Danielson Award” for best Technical Wrestler, which ZSJ won 7 years in a row sandwiched by 9 consecutive wins by Danielson and Danielson taking back that trophy last year.
Another “promised match” is KENTA vs. CM Punk over the rights to their finishing move, as both use the Go To Sleep, Punk stealing the move from KENTA. However, I think KENTA is still on the mend after getting absolutely wrecked at Wrestle Kingdom, so my money is actually CM Punk vs. Okada. Punk has also been teasing it.
This event will certainly be great, but booking it must be a nightmare. So many good wrestlers that you can’t fit them all on the card, and then you still have to manage the politics of both companies so that they both look good and have people that can actually lose.
1 Like
This is probably too much attention than it deserves, but it is a really great encapsulation of things wrong with WWE. Recently Edge has recruited Damien Priest to form a new faction. They have been cutting promos on AJ Styles and Finn Balor. I am going to reluctantly post the version on WWE’s youtube channel here.
This is the promo from last week. A very similar one ran this week. And man, is it terrible.
The set dressing is fine. You have the mastermind character sitting in a big chair, looking self-assured and conniving, with the muscle standing imposingly over his shoulder. Purple mood lighting to make it feel more ominous. Fine.
Then edge starts to speak and its really frantic and with so many cheap digs at both his opponent and the audience (more of that this week than in the one above), that he sounds the opposite of confident. Someone whose only means to elevate himself is to put others down.
And then the camera work. The setting would call for a steady shot to reflect the authority of the person that should be sitting in that chair. Instead it is wobbling all over the place. Instead of keeping Priest in the image the entire time as a constant threat, it is zooming in and out on Edge’s face for no reason or benefit.
WWE has no idea what they are doing. They make Edge look and sound like a gomergate idiot who thinks he’s cool because he bought a sword.
Honestly, the best things on the two main shows recently (other than the Randy Orton tribute hour) are, on paper, the two dumbest things.
R Truth continues to be very funny with and around the 24/7 Title. Elias’ return Ezekiel’s debut and everyone except Kevin Owens accepting that he’s totally, definitely Elias’ younger brother has been comedy gold. Last week’s lie detector test had me very sports entertained and looking forward to further shenanigans.
2 Likes
I feel/hope that this also moves Kevin Owens to a spot that’s closer to Sami Zayn’s for them to have a run with the tag gold.
The whole Ezekiel character is a perfect set up for KO the Elias truther, to get back together with Sami the conspiracy theorist.
Watching Wrestling Dontaku right now and they just announced the field for NJPW’s Best of the Super Juniors. In addition to the japanese junior division, we’re getting some of the NJPW US guys (TJP [who I don’t like], Alex Zayne and Clark Connors), new arrival Francesco Akira who recently joined Ospreay’s faction, and a whole bunch of outsiders. There is Titan from CMLL and El Lindaman, but the big names are Ace Austin from Impact wrestling, and Wheeler Yuta from AEW!
Wrestling Dontaku is in the books and it was fantastic, though slightly marred. Dontaku is always held in Fukuoka, and due to the pandemic across the two years the event was either cancelled or held at a much smaller venue. To make up for it, this year they booked the Fukuoka Dome, the baseball stadium home of NPB’s Fukuoka Hawks.
But before going into the matches, special mention of one match that happened in the lead-up a couple of days earlier. Taichi recently won the KOPW trophy from Yano in a quasi-sumo match. A couple of days ago he was challenged by Shingo Takagi in a 30-count match, where you don’t win a match with a 3-count, but instead all counts from all pin attempts are counted and the first to thirty wins. KOPW matches are always weird due to the stipulations, but this one was actually quite excellent.
Dontaku itself had a decent undercard and a bunch of title matches itself, the first of which was a Jr. Tag match with Taguchi and Wato defending against Kanemaru and Douki, with the finish ending with a face full of butt from Taguchi, which was quite funny.
Next a triple-threat match for the heavyweight tag titles, with O-Khan and Cobb defending against two teams, Yoshi-Hashi and Hirooki Goto as well as Chase Owens and Bad Luck Fale. In a very surprising end, it was the Bullet Club team that won, as I thought for sure the Empire was going to retain.
After the break in which the BOSJ line-up was announced, we got Tama Tonga vs. EVIL, a match I didn’t think much of. EVIL rarely has good matches these days, and even with the added wrinkles of the Guerillas of Destiny recently being excommunicated from Bullet Club I wasn’t really looking forward to it (Tanga Loa had defeated Yujiro Takahashi earlier in the night). However, this match was surprisingly good, though of course a bit overcooked with too much interference from Dick Togo.
The finish was rather good, as EVIL tried to throw the ref into Tama. Tama leapfrogs over the ref, nails EVIL with a Gun Stun and wins the NEVER Openweight Championship. Unfortunately, the celebration was cut short, with almost immediately a surprise attack by The Good Brothers Karl Anderson and Doc Gallows. Anderson then Gun Stuns Tama, though he botched and grabbed the wrong belt from ringside to make his claim. And to boot he then botches his signature taunt that uses machine gun sounds through the arena audio.
Moving on Taiji Ishimori challenges El Desperado for the Junior title, and two excellent wrestlers had a great match. No major spots other than El Desperado overdoing it, going for two Pinche Locos in a row, only to have the second one countered into a Yes lock and forced to tap out. Bullet Club on the march with Ishimori now the title holder.
Will Ospreay unfortunately caught covid, so instead of him Hiroshi Tanahashi is facing Tomohiro Ishii for the US title vacated by SANADA. Another fantastic match with both taking on mannerisms on the other. I never thought I would see Ishii perform slingblades or try to win a magistral. Excellent match. However, in the end it was Tanahashi who proved victorious, setting up a match against Jon Moxley in Washingto DC later this month. After the match, Chase Owens shows up, but he is only a diversion as a huge guy in a belaclava and a Bullet Club jacket enters the ring. He proceeds to nail Tana with a killswitch maneuver and sure enough, it is Juice Robinson, freshly turned heel and aligning himself with BC.
The main event is a rubber match between Kazuchika Okada and Tetsuya Naito. Naito lost to Okada in February at New Beginning, but beat him in the New Japan Cup. Okada can’t let that stand and so the top two stars in the company face off in a Dome main event. Excellent match just all around. Nothing too crazy happening but with an innovative finish as Okada may have presented a new signature move, a sort of cobra twist flowsion that is as of yet unnamed. Okada wins after hitting the Rainmaker, but thanks Naito for the match.
However, as Okada’s music is playing to walk off, it is interrupted and Switchblade Jay White’s music starts up. Bullet Club’s intrusion just won’t abade tonight, as White and Gedo proceed to taunt Okada and attack him. Subsequently the rest of Bullet Club, now posessing almost all the titles and making challenges for the rest walk out and announce their presence in a long speech. Notably though not a single member of the House of Torture is part of the proceedings.
Dante Martin and Rey Fenix were phenomenal on Dynamite this week. Two agile, athletic guys doing agile, athletic things at each other. It was a whole lot of fun flippy shit.
I haven’t seen any of William Morrissey’s (formerly known as Big Cass) Impact work, but he looks fantastic, especially considering his health issues, and he did a great job continuing to build Wardlow. Wardlow vs. Dozens of Unnamed Security People continues to actually work.
The Acclaimed and the Ass Boys Gunn Club have done two very funny backstage segments together.
William Regal was incredibly thirsty on commentary (the match was good, too).
“Man With a Mask [Excalibur], you’re looking SCRUMPTIOUS on your profile tonight! Scrummy-Scrummy-Scrummy! Ooh ooh ooh!”
“I love to see fellas getting tossed around by big men.”
Oh, and Chris Jericho’s a wizard now. Eddie Kingston is absent tonight because he’s suffering from a fireball.
Something that I loved being a fan from the territory days was Regal’s promo for the BCC. It’s on YouTube and worth looking up since it shows how well Regal does at villainous promos…