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On the Women's Royal Rumble and Framing

December 19, 2017, 8:35 am
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See something wrong with this pic?
Photo Credit: WWE.com
The Royal Rumble is approaching, and for the last few months, rumors have been flying about a second Rumble match for the women. Last night, those rumors became incarnate, as the women's Rumble match was announced to close RAW. WWE set the table for it with reintroducing Paige and debuting five women from NXT, and having the entire RAW women's roster out to brawl around the ring was the perfect canvas to bring it all home. However, in typical WWE fashion, rather than using said brawl to set up the match for storyline reasons, it had Stephanie McMahon come out, eyes affixed on her, so she could talk about how WWE was such a force for good by only recently giving women what they should have had all along.

Of course, it's nothing new that WWE does this kind of corporate self-back-patting, especially when it comes to women. While the company has cultivated a strong roster of female wrestlers, the person at the forefront has always been McMahon. This entire venture hasn't been to enrich the wrestlers, as if WWE has ever been a venture to enrich anyone but the McMahon family and company shareholders. It has been to show that the family that helped enable soft fascism to attain the office of the Presidency is woke. So while it's not surprising that the announcement of a women's Rumble match went down the way it did, it's still disappointing.

It is also inherently damaging to the idea of kayfabe and suspension of disbelief, but WWE has already more than dabbled in that market to begin with. The big kerfluffle in Wrestling Twitter Discourse has people choosing sides between the Young Bucks and MMA Bros Phil Baroni and Daniel Cormier over this spot from Final Battle:

The biggest critique from those guys and of course Vince Russo (because who knows more about quality in-ring action than Vinny Ru) is that it's a "gymnastics routine," not wrestling. I get why people don't like it or the Ricochet/Will Ospreay match from last year or whatever. Honestly, I thought it was fine until the second and third double dropkick because that felt like overkill. But to call it anything that would imply it exposes the business is bullshit because they're clearly trying to do moves to each other and just countering them in acrobatic means. It's defensible. It's not for everyone, but it's defensible.

What is so defensible about presenting Dolph Ziggler's character as someone who is good at "performing" and mad that people are getting "opportunities" over him (read, winning matches) because of their entrances? What's defensible about John Cena and Roman Reigns using insider terms like Bobby Flay uses chili oils in cooking competitions? What's defensible about Stephanie McMahon interrupting a story-driven brawl just so she could do a bullshit pep talk doubled as a press release on her own airwaves to cut out the middleman? If you want the culprit on who plays fast and loose with the fourth wall for its own bullshit gains, it ain't the Young Bucks or the other high-flying-type wrestlers they go up against.

All of this could have been avoided had WWE done one of two things. If it wanted to go the bullshit corporate rah rah route, then don't book the final match to be a brawl that only stops when Stephanie McMahon's golden visage strides down to the ring, causing everyone to forget their own personal issues and gaze, mouths agape, and the greatness of the ubermensch in their presence. Just set it up as McMahon having a big announcement and then have her do that speech. It's been done like that before, and I'm sure they'll do it again. The other way it could have pulled it off would have been to go with the brawl and either have McMahon or preferably Kurt Angle make the announcement that because everyone is so rowdy and unruly on both brands that the only solution would be to have a women's Royal Rumble match to let them get their aggressions out. Either way, the framing is shifted and the results would have then come off infinitely better than what was presented last night.

But WWE has had a problem with framing for as long as I've been a wrestling fan, maybe longer. Even in the salad days, multiple points in a random telecast of WWE programming would give cause to shake one's head. Even if the current rush towards gender equity wasn't some far-too-little, far-too-late makeup bullshit, it would be a lot better served if it were folded into the narrative naturally, or if not, at least framed in a way that didn't interfere with said narrative. Last night's rollout of the women's Rumble match was just another example of WWE fumbling another opportunity out of a sense of self-gratification.
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Year End Sorting Bins: Well, Sure, Maybe, I Guess, Perhaps

December 19, 2017, 1:30 pm
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He can do good shit, but man, Ospreay just is a turnoff otherwise
Photo Credit: NJPW website
The next category in the sorting bins is "Begrudging Toleration." These wrestlers are as the bin name says, those I tolerate. I don't actively hate them like I do in the other category, but if they're on screen, well, I'm probably going for the other person. Additionally, this and the next two boxes will not have writeups for everyone, because do you want me to be here the rest of the year just writing this one up? Without further ado...

Will Ospreay - The shame part is that Ospreay is a pretty good performer, great sometimes. Every time I see him in the ring, it's like I'm watching the future of wrestling unfold in front of my eyes. That being said, the dude faves racist tweets, bitches and moans about people stealing moves that he borrowed three degrees from the original, and is notoriously bad at Twitter. Every time I wanna feel good about watching him, he gives me five reasons to want to never see his ass again.

Trent Seven - I hate that he gets clowned on for his body type, because fat-shaming is bad. He should get clowned upon because he's a replacement-level worker.

Mauro Ranallo - The bloom came off his rose really quickly. It sucks that he got bullied by human wastebasket JBL, but at the same time, he came back to NXT and was... well, still not as good as his billing in the Cruiserweight Classic.

Billy Gunn - The novelty of seeing him working the New Japan America shows was fun for like a minute, but then Gedo put him in a nearly 15 minute match and well no.

Austin Aries - I felt bad for him for a hot second after his promo meltdown at his House of Hardcore debut, but man, has anyone done less with more than Aries in his career?

Lacey Evans - If the phrase "all lives matter" was made flesh incarnate, that would be Evans, but I'll admit she's a really good worker for her skill level.

Jinder Mahal - Oh boy. I don't think I've ever really enjoyed watching him work outside of comedy stuff in 3MB, but then he went and concussed Finn Bálor and got a main event push. He became a talking point, and the amount of cacophony around him got super annoying to the point where he wasn't a wrestler but a talking point. You could see him improving incrementally, and it absolutely sucked that his entire push was based on racism, but man, the amount of narrative weight sunk into him in 2017 on Smackdown was a waste.

Matt Sydal - Someone check those Peruvian hallucinogens he's been taking because he's turned out to be a massive throbbing cock lately, hasn't he.

Bray Wyatt - I want to like Wyatt, and it's accurate to admit that it isn't all his fault, but how many good wrestlers have overcome shitty booking to show some sort of worth? It's to the point where I'm annoyed WWE is wasting Broken, I'm sorry, "Woken" Matt Hardy on him.

Enzo Amore - He's another guy I really want to like, and honestly, I think I'm re-turning a corner on him in the new year, but it's like putting him in the cruiserweight division when he still can't work feels like a continued slap in the face of everyone who got excited for the division after the CWC.

Hirooki Goto - The big Goto rehabilitation is happening right now, and I still don't see it. He's kinda like if Randy Orton were not a creep and a bit beefier. I just don't get him.

Simon Grimm - I asked if anyone has done less with more than Austin Aries, but Grimm/Gotch comes really close.

Tessa Blanchard - I'd be okay with her as a backstage asshole if she were a) any good, b) not a sanctimonious prick, but hey, she's both!

Brock Lesnar - The only saving grace Lesnar has anymore is that whenever you think his presence on the show is a detriment, he goes out and has a bomb match. But he's just not around enough anymore that the blinks in quality matter.

The Undertaker - Honestly, he should've retired years ago. But he just shows up, and it's groan-inducing. The match with Roman Reigns at Mania was just embarrassing, and you could tell Reigns was just straining and straining to get something out of him. It's just sad to watch anymore.

And the Rest: Bo Dallas, Carmella, Chavo Guerrero, Chris Dickinson, Crummels and DeFarge, Curt Hawkins, Dana Brooke, Dasha Fuentes, Deonna Purrazzo, Ivelisse Velez, Joey Ryan, Karl Anderson, Kenny King, Laynie Luck, Luke Gallows, Marty Scurll, Mike Quackenbush, Nigel McGuinness, Noam Dar, Riddick Moss, R-Truth, Seth Rollins, Sexy Star, Singh Bros., Team Sea Stars, Tino Sabbatelli, Tyler Bate, Vanessa Borne, Wolfgang, Yoshi Tatsu, Yujiro Takahashi
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Your Midweek Links: Only Four Reading Days Before Christmas

December 20, 2017, 10:15 am
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Lots of chatter about the women's Rumble
Photo Credit: WWE.com
So, Christmas is almost upon the world. Either you're at your office, whiling down time until you can take off, or you've taken off and are frantically shopping for last minute gifts. Either way, take some time out and read the good stuff. That's right, a whole lot of people are writing bomb-ass shit about pro wrestling. Why don't you settle down, pull up some of these here hyperlinks, and edify yourself before you go crazy from holiday fever?

The YEAR END BLOWOUT is in full effect. Catch up with it here. [The Wrestling Blog]

The women's Royal Rumble was announced Monday, and I had a few thoughts on it, mainly that Stephanie McMahon ruins everything with her bullshit pandering and framing. [The Wrestling Blog]

Nick Piccone also has some thoughts about it, mainly that it's about goddamn time WWE has a Rumble match for its female competitors. [Medium]

Mohamed looked at WWE's 2017 since it's basically over, and he has his own thoughts about how things went down. [Medium]

A big part of that year was the push of Jinder Mahal, and Ian Williams takes a look back at it now that it has ended. [VICE Sports]

Ashly Nagrant takes a look at the women's title scene on Smackdown and on the invasions of both brands by NXT-heavy infiltrators. [Deadshirt]

Wrestling is part physical but also part verbal, and John Corrigan looks at his top ten talkers from 2017. [The Wrestling Estate]

A punk rock show in New York booked wrestling matches with no ring, including Zack Sabre, Jr. vs. Chuck Taylor. David Bixenspan went and reported back. [Deadspin]

Sam DiMascio takes a look back at one of the best matches in indie wrestling from this decade so far, one that included AR Fox and Rich Swann. [Spandex Are Still Cool]

JJ McGee continues his look at the saga of El Generico and Kevin Steen as he reviews their Final Battle 2010 match. [The Spectacle of Excess]

You ever wanted to play the equivalent of Tony Hawk's Skater in wrestling? Christian Patterson says to play Fire Pro Wrestling. [Medium]

NON-WRESTLING #1: It's the Christmas season, so of course Elle Collins went and dream cast a live-action Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. [SyFy Wire]

NON-WRESTLING #2: Rovitz takes the Packers to task for sabotaging their season playing the washed up Aaron Rodgers over Brett Hundley. [HOT SPROTS TAKES]
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TH Prediction Watch: Grading 2017 Twitter Predictions for Accuracy

December 21, 2017, 6:00 am
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I got this reunion right and not much else
Photo Credit: WWE.com
Predictions are a tricky thing. Because the future is unwritten and volatile, few can read the tea leaves and come out accurately 100 percent of the time. However, that doesn't stop anyone from trying. I try not to engage in the practice, but last year, I did one of those "one like, one prediction" gimmicks for wrestling. I made somewhere close to 100 predictions, and while many of them were wrong, some of them were right! I'm going to list all the predictions I made here and then catalog how correct they were.

Well, ya boy TH was wrong right out of the gate. Omega did not defeat Kazuchika Okada, even though the match did get six stars from Dave Meltzer.

I choose to ignore everything after the first comma and claim victory on this. The Shield reunited in an official capacity before the TLC pay-per-view, although Roman Reigns, Seth Rollins, and Dean Ambrose did not wrestle an official match together until after the event, thanks to Reigns catching a mean case of the mumps.

The current surname-less wrestler did win the Ring of Honor Championship, but he failed to capture any of the other titles, so this prediction is a dud.

LOL she didn't even compete. Princesa Sugehit was the Mexican emissary, and she lost in the second round. Dud.

The Hardy Boys weren't with TNA/Impact long enough last year to get themselves a pay-per-view, let alone one at their compound. Dud.

This prediction was a swish. Dijak signed the papers in the summer, and he's currently rolling around the Florida loop, waiting to get his call onto NXT television.

So this one was half right. Nakamura lost the Big X to Bobby Roode in the main event of Takeover: San Antonio, but he ended up getting his return match at Takeover: Orlando and waiting on his Smackdown debut until two nights after Mania.

The Empress of Tomorrow didn't lose the title to anyone, forfeiting it upon her arrival to RAW. So this one was doubly wrong. DUD DUD.

Oh god, this one was a real dud, even though Cross and Moon did have critically acclaimed matches with Asuka for the title. By transitive property, maybe I'm right but transitive property don't work here, brah.

Pete Dunne didn't work a single date for EVOLVE, and Thatcher dropped to Zack Sabre, Jr. well in advance of Mania. DUD. To add even more salt to the wound, Big Stoke remained faithful to him all the way through.

Again, this prediction was half-right. Dunne didn't win the tournament, but Tyler Bate did. Oops.

The first half of this prediction was right, but the second remains up in the air. Leaving his ring gear behind to end Mania was a huge sign of retirement, but he never officially announced, and people are insisting he's not done. So who knows.

This one remains to be seen as well if just for technicality. Cena took more roles in 2017, but none of them outside of perhaps Ferdinand would generate Oscar buzz. Ferdinand may only get a nomination in the animated category, which doesn't have separate voice acting. I'm gonna call this one a DUD for now.

This prediction was three-out-of-seven, or under half. DUD.

This one may seem like a whiff on the surface, but it may just have been a year premature. She's training at the Performance Center, and she's in negotiation for a contract. Still, she didn't wrestle either McMahon or Flair at all, let alone to close the show, so DUD.

Again, I am going to lop off the second half of this prediction as I got way too specific in an attempt to be cute and claim this one as a victory. McGregor didn't appear in WWE, and I don't think he will until his star really falls through the floor.

This one didn't happen, but in a way, it was good that it didn't. Cesaro and Sheamus was a goddamn bomb-ass tag team all year.

Punk didn't even have a second MMA fight, and he's still trying to fuck that chicken. So double DUD.

Thankfully, this one was a dud. They did name it after Mae Young, who's only slightly problematic a historical figure instead of Moolah who was an actual pimp.

Had the Hardys stayed in TNA, I believe this would have happened. However, you don't get credit for extrapolation, so DUD.

Oh man, this one was such a whiff, I think it chain-reacted to cause a Pacific Ocean cyclone this year.

WWE did try to snag the Hardys and hey, it was successful. It didn't snare Lashley though. Calling this a dud.

Ryback didn't work anything closely resembling a familiar prestige indie at all. Dud.

Miz held the Intercontinental Championship for most of the year, the feuds were hot, and the WON crowd resented the shit out of it. One could even argue that the IC title was the top title on RAW when Miz had it because Brock Lesnar was an absentee Universal Champion for most of the year. Your mileage may vary for this one.

AJ Styles won the top spot on the TWB 100 quite easily. This one was the most inside baseball prediction, but hey, it counts.

I may not have been 100 percent serious when I made this prediction, but it was wrong anyway.

Season four was not announced until late this year and won't air until next year, so this prediction was dead on arrival.

Aries actually had a marquee run in the cruiserweight division and then left the company, so this one was a dud.

The G1 Finals pitted Tetsuya Naito and Kenny Omega against each other, so I'd say no, this one wasn't accurate at all.

Another half-right prediction, Danielle Moinet was future endeavored, but she's shown no signs of continuing on in wrestling, at least yet.

I was right. This one WAS a layup.

Henry hasn't been the most active wrestler, but he hasn't officially retired yet. Call this one a dud.

Mike Quackenbush had quite a few matches in 2017, and Gran Akuma came back towards the end of the year. I nailed this one.

Man, this one was proven right almost right out of the gate, as Angle was announced for the Hall of Fame quite early on in the year. He's spent the year since WrestleMania as the RAW GM, and he's even wrestled twice. A slam dunk.

Even though WWE totally has the roster to do this, fans of beefy wrestlers have been left out in the cold by the company named after gigantic beings (Titan Sports).


That's the only time he's ever mentioned hot dogs on Twitter. Technically, this one is wrong, but man, he's had awful opinions on scads of other topics, like Star Wars and net neutrality, so maybe this one is right in spirit.

Nope, Luger was left out of this past year's class. Will he get in this year? Maybe, maybe not. Who knows. Who cares. Aside from Luger, of course.

Nope, regardless of one's opinion of it, 205 Live is still ongoing, and WWE is emboldened enough to put it on tour in the coming year. Dud.

Apparently, CZW had one at the time of this prediction. ROH is in the process of doing one, but I don't think they have it set up yet? I don't know? I don't feel like looking it up? I'll take a L on this anyway, especially since I mentioned FloSlam and FloSlam is dead as a doornail.

Shaq vs. Big Show didn't happen, and I am confident that even so, it was better than Triple H vs. Seth Rollins, so I'm taking credit for this one.

I'm not even sure Scott was rumored to join the proceedings at any point outside of my own cheerleading. Dud.

This one's another stillborn opinion, since the Women of Honor title won't be decided until next year. Leon, however, did get more than a few head-scratching big wins in the STARDOM Grand Prix round robin tourney, including one over Io Shirai. Where smoke rises, it comes from fire...

I don't care if it fell apart because Jarrett's alcoholism ruined everything. I nailed this one. Impact and Global Force Wrestling were a merged entity for about a month.

Trump has been talking shit on North Korea, a nuclear power with capability to hit the United States. Even though I have no concrete evidence that McMahon talked Trump out of preemptively firing a nuke, well, it's entirely plausible that he did. Gonna call this a push.

Sabre held the title until he dropped it to Chuck Taylor, who the last time I checked was from Kentucky. While "UK" is shorthand for both the University of Kentucky and United Kingdom, well, that's about as close as I got with this one.

Wrong on the first account, since WWE released Emma, Darren Young, and Summer Rae at least. AS for someone big quitting, Neville tried to quit, but WWE wouldn't let him. He's still being held hostage. Free Neville!

WWE sure didn't sign him, but Ring of Honor did, and New Japan started using him, so while this was wrong, good for Chuckie T.

Another dud, WWE announced this upcoming Mania to happen in New Orleans.

The first half was right, but the second half was a divergence. However, SHIMMER is sort of under the umbrella of the RISE/Wrestling Pipeline family of entities right now so it seems I just got the benefactor wrong.

Goldberg didn't officially retire, but he didn't wrestle Reigns, and his most recent match against Brock Lesnar was acclaimed. Gonna call this a dud all around.

I was 100 percent right with this prediction except it wasn't for the reasons I thought I'd be last Christmas Eve.

Flair lost the RAW Women's Title early in 2017 and didn't regain another until recently. She's still a bit aways from eight total reigns, half of what her daddy had.

Again, I added in a bit too much detail to seem cute, but honestly, this one was a home run down to Paige returning only after she broke it off with Alberto el Patron.

Not even close, although it stands to mention that All-Japan Pro Wrestling's comeback in 2017 is one of Japan's best feelgood stories of the year.

Another mighty whiff. Man.

I should've just not made meme predictions like this.

I have no clue if this one's right. They headlined a few indie shows, but I guess the closest they might have done in Mexico would have been for The Crash.

This show hasn't really gotten off the ground yet enough to have storylines other than "Wow, British wrestling is innovative and no we haven't heard about Ring of Honor from the Mid-Aughts, why would you ask that?"

He hasn't wrestled again, but he's back as Defiant Wrestling's authority figure. SO this one's wrong, but it might end up coming to fruition later than expected.

As much as I wanted this to be true, nope, WWE is stuck with him.

All I needed was one, and what do you know, Drew Galloway showed up at Takeover: Orlando. All he had to do was miss a WWN Live Supershow booking to be there, but hey, fucking over paying customers wasn't a condition of being right on this one.

Another hit!

This one was wrong, because the Bucks ended up losing the titles to the Lucha Bros.

Seeing as though the ending of Takeover: Brooklyn III was all about Cole making his big NXT debut and accruing his big stable, I'd say I was pretty wrong on this one, what do you think.

Matt Riddle is not the Champion, but Zack Sabre, Jr. is. DUD.

Cabana is calling matches for the current ROH Champion, who is Dalton Castle. DUD.

Ricochet has less than one degree from Ospreay, but he's not Ospreay. DUD.

I wonder if I might prefer Cody! over the current Impact Champion, Eli Drake. DUD.

Not only is this prediction dead wrong, it's dead depressing.

I'm pretty sure this one's only right because I spoiled myself on Ultima Lucha Tres and didn't think LU would switch the title early in season four, not knowing that it wouldn't even begin shooting season four until 2018.

Did Jigsaw even work a single Chikara date in 2017? DUD.

Honestly, I'd be a lot happier if it were Strowman and not Brock fuckin Lesnar.

This one's also depressing, although for different reasons than Shibata's was.

Nope, but she'll probably have the RAW one in tow by the night after the Rumble, I gather.

I had no idea Cena would have a foot-and-a-half out the door for Hollywood by now, or else he might've been the one to end Jinder Mahal's reign of terror.

He never even got a fighter's chance.

Again, she'd have had to have signed first to do that.

Well, I was right on the first part, but Big E is still just doing tag shenanigans, so this is another one that's ruined by getting too cute with things.

Sadly, DUD.

Perhaps my biggest miscalculation here was that the Democratic party would offer any kind of real resistance to Trump at all and act like a real live opposition party instead of just talking a big game and basically letting him and congressional Republicans roll over the country. Hell, Chuck Schumer actually actively helped Trump make things worse in the Middle East! Ugh.

The only thing saving this prediction in technicality is that his WWE signing hasn't been announced yet.

LOL no.

Two Money in the Bank matches happened, but they were both Smackdown-branded and one was for the women's title. But to be fair, two men did end up winning them...

You can't lose what you don't have.

Well, I was right on Naito winning the G1, so yay?

I'm not even going to go back and calculate my success rate because it's bad. Real bad. I won't want to demoralize myself anymore than I already am. Check back here next year at the same time, when I'll have double the predictions to type DUD after for how wrong they are.
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NXT In 120 Seconds

December 22, 2017, 6:00 am
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Instant Classic, Part the Third
Photo Credit: WWE.com
Killian Dain:is there
The Artists Formerly Known As ReDragon: quick tag in and out, land blows to little or no effect then regroup on the floor
Eric Young: tags in, executes a falling forearm Demolition Decapitation
Bobby Fish: clotheslines his feet from the floor to sweep him into the apron 
TAFKARD: try their quick tags and strikes against the smaller opponent far more successfully
E.Y.: gets a desperation neckbreaker on O'Reilly
Fish: tags in and tags Killian, drawing him into the ring  Hey, ref!  Chicanery!  Attempted chicanery!
Referee: Big man!  Back on the apron!  Come on, you know the rules.
E.Y.: low bridges Fish out after booting him in the face, eventually orients himself and goes for the tag
Kyle O'Reilly: NOPE!  picks the ankle
E.Y.: kicks him away YUP!  tags out
K.O.R.: Oh, mittens.
KD: Avalanches!  Running senton/shotgun dropkick combo!  Michinoku one onto the other!
Fish, the Other: Barely saving still counts as a save.
E.Y.: Out of the way, you!  powerbombs Kyle and goes up for the Savage elbow
Some Guy: crotches him
Kyle: Axe (kick)!  (forearm) Smash!
Referee: Kickout!
Some Guy, BAY BAY: Oh, come on ref!  How was that not a AHHHH OH GOD MY FACE
Nikki Cross: runs in from the crowd, dives off the apron with her +body, then swings away
Other Referees: come from the back and gradually manage to take her with them
Adam Cole: Get her out of here!
Full Sailors: Let them fight!  Let them fight! 
E.Y.: drops both Dragons
KD: goes after Cole
ACBB: shoves Dain into the post
E.Y.: Crap.  topes Cole And now back into the ring, where
TAFKARD: Totally Eliminate him
Referee: Winners and new tag team champions!
ACBB: OMG IT WORKED EFFING AWESOME

Heavy Machinery, Tino Sabotelli and Riddick Moss: call each other pal, guy, friend, and chief without meaning any of those words
Mossotelli: drive off in their Maserati

Roderick Strong: attacks
Lars Sullivan: swats him away
Roddy: attacks
Lars: swats him away
Roddy: attacks
Lars: LARIAT.
Roddy: ...now that you mention it, I may be bleeding inside of my chest.
Lars: I will END YOU!
Roddy: Huge dropkick!  Enzuigiri!  Superplex!
Lars: kicks out at one
Everybody Ever, Even You: oh he is fucked
Roddy: But...but my knees...my Angle Slam...
Lars: Pop up powerslam Freak Accident sit DOWN Malenkbro
Referee: Winner! 

Tyler Bate: Tonight is my night.  Tonight I regain the WWEUK title.
Full Sailors: pop for him
Full Sailors, Moments Later: BRUISERWEIGHT!  BRUISERWEIGHT!  BRUISERWEIGHT! BRUISERWEIGHT!
Some Full Sailors, Moments After That: TYLER BATE!  TYLER BATE!  TYLER BATE!  TYLER BATE!
Announcer: The following contest is scheduled for one fall...
Full Sailors: One fall!
Announcer: ...and is for the WWE United!  Kingdom!  Championship!
What He Should've Said Instead:




Pete Dunne: wrestles with plenty of joint manipulation, as is his wont
Tyler: counters eventually, working to get out of a headscissors, then waves at Pete
Mauro Ranallo: (quieter than usual but obviously pleased) A pleasure to watch.
Nigel McGuiness: (same) Yeah.
Dunne: continues advancing his earlier work but now with occasional paintbrush jobs
Full Sailors: clap to rally
Tyler: reverses and dropkicks Dunne to the corner
Nigel?  Mauro?:  Shades of Johnny Saint there.
Dunne: gets Tyler to the mat and in addition to joint manipulation adds a few nose fishhooks, sweeps out his bridge attempts then backs between the ropes when Tyler wants to fight him before smirking
Tyler: bop BANG
Referee: Kickout!

Dunne: lands a couple big forearms and suplexes Bate off the steps
Tyler: gets beat on back inside the ring and manages to get the ropes
Dunne: stomps on his hand as retribution so badly it dislocates a finger
Tyler: takes a few beats popping it into place
God's Production Team: sure didn't miss any of that
Tyler: takes a further beating until he decides gradually to eff that ess and Explodes Pete, charging European uppercuts, standing Shooting Star Press, deadlift suplex with a bridge
Referee: Kickout!
Dunne: sells his shoulder
Tyler: Rolling koppu kick!  Tyler Driver '97!
Dunne: NOOOOPE reverses to a triangle
Tyler: crap crap crap crap crap powerbombs Pete
Dunne: keeps the hold on
Tyler: Oh, for the love of crumb cake...slowly powers Dunne up again, then slingshots him into the top rope to break
Mauro?  Nigel?: We're past the hour mark now, but ain't no way we're leaving this.
Tyler: Airplane spin!  Same but reverse!   And back to the first with some sauce on it!
Referee: Kickout!
Dunne: crawls to the apron while looking like he's about to vomit
Tyler: cinches him up from the apron while standing in the middle of the second rope and Explodes him even worse
Referee: Kickout!
Everybody: whoa
Dunne: grabs the arm and lays in a dozen vicious kicks
Tyler: does the same right back asap
Dunne: Bitter End!  Count it!
Referee: Kickout!
Everybody: oooooooh  UK!  clap clap  UK!  clap clap  UK!  clap clap  UK!  clap clap
Tyler: Rebound lariat!
Dunne: HARDER STANDING LARIAT!
Both: momentarily dead

Both, A Few Seconds Later: fight all the way up from their knees to fully upright
Tyler: RIGHT FUCKING HAND
Everybody Ever, Even You: OH CRAP 
Tyler: You aren't escaping from me on the apron!  BOP BANG!  ROLLING KOPPU KICK!  And now I will
Dunne: FOREARM.
Tyler: Gghhghg
Dunne: X-PLEX ORANGE CRUSH!
Referee: Kickout!
Everybody Ever, Even You: whaHAAAAAAAAaTTTttt
Tyler: sluices out to the floor
Dunne: goes to get him back in
Tyler: REBOUND LARIAT, SOMEHOW!  OVER THE TOP ROPE TOPE!  gets PETE back in TYLER!  DRIVER!  NINETY SEVEN!
Referee: ONE!  TWO!  THREkickout!
Mauro: ...oh, my GOD.

Tyler: SPIRAL TAP SENTON BOMB ah hell I didn't get all of it

Referee: Kickout! 
Mauro and Nigel: If he had gotten all of it, Dunne wouldn't be champion right now.  But he is, this match somehow continues, and I would be fine with it lasting the rest of the year.
Tyler: sets up Pete on the top rope facing the crowd AVALANCHE RELEASE GERMAN SUPLEX!
Dunne: lands on his feet Fuck all that.  BITTER.  FUCKING.  END.  And for fuck's sake, count. 
Referee: ONE!  TWO!  THREE!
Everybody Ever (With The Exception Of Tyler), Especially You: applauds through 90 seconds of replays
Mauro: A three seg instant classic with no commercial breaks.  Bradshaw can eat all the hobo dicks.
Nigel: What'd you just say?
Mauro: clears throat "Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!
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The Airing of Grievances: The Oldest Tag

December 22, 2017, 9:00 am
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Oh god, the grievances with him are a mile long
Photo Credit: WWE.com
"I got a lot of problems with you people!"— Frank Costanza (as played by Jerry Stiller in Seinfeld season nine, episode ten, "The Strike")

Festivus is technically tomorrow, but I'm not posting on a Saturday, so you get your grievances today. It's really just one grievance, and it's not even with everyone this time around. It may not even be with "you" people. It might only just be with one person who doesn't even read this blog and isn't concerned with my happiness as long as he can snow enough of, well, "you" people into buying his shit and glorifying his name. I'm talking about Paul Levesque, better known to the wrestling world at large as Triple H.

For those who don't know, I have a longstanding beef with Triple H. The only time I've ever really liked him as a performer was in the sweet spot right after Shawn Michaels went on his two year sabbatical for "back injuries" and he was left in charge of D-Generation X. Before then, who cares, he was just some piddling dude who usually ended up getting some kind of comeuppance, whether it be thrown into slop or squashed in under a minute at WrestleMania. Afterwards, when he got his earnest push to the main event, he got boring and plodding and annoying. I admit that I bought into the political shit way too hard, not that he wasn't a politicker, but that I cared too much about it with him when nearly everyone else did it. Don't hate the player, hate the game, right? (I swear, pun not intended.)

But it was like, Triple H playing the game led to dreadfully banal stories and matches at best and out and out gross shit at worst. I mean, why should anyone who willingly went along with racisming Booker T into temporary oblivion at WrestleMania XIX or doing the Katie Vick angle with Kane be considered an all-time great? But hey, he not only got into Vince McMahon's ear, but he managed to marry into the family. He got infinite lives to be boring and self-serving, and that pretty much drove me away from WWE and wrestling for a good five years. When I came back, he was still jizzing all over the place, but his spotlight had been diminished thanks to John Cena, who was still in the mold of a WWE ubermensch but at the same time, oddly more likable and talented.

So he began the process of going away, and then when he resurfaced, it was as the face of NXT, not as a competitor, but as the McMahon-figure, the boss, or more accurately according to the decidedly soft focus-friendly public relations push, the benefactor. And you know what, it almost started to work with me. When NXT got to the Network, it was mother's milk, and this was even at a time when the main roster product was cooking at its height, right before WrestleMania XXX. It cut through the bullshit and gave people hope that maybe something better was in store for the main roster once Vince McMahon died or lost his mind or got bored with wrestling and decided to do something stupid like, oh, I don't know, resurrect the goddamn XFL.

Choice number three is the one that has come up just now. The patriarch of WWE just created the most Vince McMahon company name ever (Alpha Entertainment, LLC) and is filing trademarks for XFL-related terms and names. It's getting people way too excited for a Triple H and Stephanie McMahon takeover of the company. I should be excited, right? Well, no, I'm not. NXT and all the signings couldn't get me over the hump to like Triple H. Well, the residual hate over the years was hard to wash away, and a person's gotta face down to the fact that he also kept in lockstep with the family on Donald Trump and all that other happy fash horseshit. But the answers to my disillusionment came in NXT itself.

When the Network run started, the live Takeover events would air on either Thursday or Wednesday, depending on which night of the week NXT was at the time. They'd run two hours instead of one, and it'd be the perfect sort of oasis in the middle of the week, usually a week that didn't coincide with a main roster pay-per-view. It was the littlest but most perfect slice of heaven that a plodding corporate entity could have put out. Then, somewhere along the way, Triple H showed he was the same as his father-in-law, the same as any other greedy piece-of-shit wrestling promoter who placed dollar amounts over vision, aping already successful models with diminishing returns over staying a course and trying something different. He tethered Takeovers to the Big Four main roster shows and moved them to Saturday. His spots weren't the same as McMahon's. He just did a better job of hiding them, but make no mistake, those spots are those of a craven little man who strains to garner the attention of the popular kids instead of making those popular kids pay attention to him on his own fucking terms.

You can see it with how he treats the roster too. I'm laying it out there that Trips has never shied away from using bigtime indie stars as his basis. Sami Zayn, Cesaro, Neville, and Paige all attained stardom outside of WWE to varying levels (Paige maybe being the most tenuous one, but still, she was a name), and all were at the foundation of NXT's transition from the Seth Rollins-Big E Langston-Bo Dallas era into the one that led the charge. However, these wrestlers all were built up anew from their indie days, most notably and successfully Zayn, who went from El Generico, a lovable babyface that was also, in retrospect, a hella racist caricature, to someone a little more wholesome and less problematic without the mask. Basically, that crucial era of NXT was built upon a mix of wrestlers and gimmicks that, even if they weren't defined as people wanted them to be, had some kind of purpose and were able to stand as characters instead of just names.

That all ended after the culmination of what was the pinnacle angle and title chase, at least on the male side, when Zayn finally won the NXT Championship and was rewarded with a Kevin Owens powerbomb onto the apron. When Triple H decided he was just going to steal a decade's worth of build from the indies and rehash the big twist of Final Battle '09 with a fraction of the setup, he sold out what he had built for trying to throw flashbang grenades at indie fans signaling he was just going to coast. Hell, the fuse had been lit before when the big introductions of KENTA and Prince Devitt to the roster as big free agent signings, but at least they got NXT names and were given purposes beyond "they were famous elsewhere." NXT never extended that courtesy to Uhaa Nation when he was let loose into the narrative. It even stopped attempting to rebrand established stars in some cases, not all, but some, like with Austin Aries or Shinsuke Nakamura or all of the Undisputed Era. NXT went from quaint but quality two hour shows on Wednesday night featuring a well-molded cast of characters to trying to be some fucking hybrid of main roster WWE and the amalgamated idea of every super indie and New Japan Pro Wrestling smushed through the hopper and shoved out as sausage by a dude who can't help but make it the same way they did in Georgia in 1986.

Don't get me wrong. NXT is still enjoyable, the most consistently enjoyable product WWE puts out, pending how one might feel about 205 Live. That being said, consistent enjoyability in relative terms for WWE isn't a high bar to clear. I miss my old NXT (and I'm sure people more hipster-y than I will say they missed when you had to watch NXT on rips from Brighthouse Network on YouTube or with a Hulu sub), and the reason why it went from that halcyon era to what it is now, an in-your-face mash up of wrestlers who were famous elsewhere descending upon Full Sail or Center Stage or wherever they're taping, and oh, a couple of Performance Center trainees will be there too, is because Triple H isn't interested in being your savior for your benefit. He's not in it for the art either. He's in it for his own sainthood. He's always been in it for himself. If he wasn't, Takeovers would still be on Wednesday, and he'd have given half these motherfuckers on the roster a gimmick or character motivation better than "uh, I dunno."

That's why I still bristle when people say "All hail!" unironically. The oldest tag on this blog still works, because Triple H sucks. He's always sucked, and he always will suck. WWE will not be saved when he takes over. Oh, it might improve, but instead of Hero of the Day narratives featuring John Cena or Roman Reigns or whoever succeeds them, it'll be rehashing of Trips' salad days as an overbearing heel who did a poor Ric Flair cosplay and whose comeuppances were never really permanent anyway. Time is a flat circle, and one that has a yin and a yang. Neither one are good, they're just bad in their own way, it seems.

I have an announcement. Feats of Strength will be postponed until 2018, when Katsuya Kitamura arrives in America for his excursion. Thank you for your consideration.
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Year End Sorting Bins: I Like the Cut of Your Jib

January 2, 2018, 10:45 am
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I've turned yet another corner on Charlotte Flair
Photo Credit: WWE.com
So now, the time has come to crack open the largest sorting bin, "General Affinity." It's by far the largest because I'm not in this to go hate on people. I generally enjoy most of the people I watch, even if not all of them can be favorites. Strap in, I'm gonna write blurbs for 30 of these bad boys, girls, and persons of other gender and then list a whole bunch of them down at the bottom.

Charlotte Flair - It's weird. Her entire gimmick is that she's "genetically superior," and yet when she plays to her genetic forebear, father Ric, Flair falls short. The biggest surprise of the year was when she came over to Smackdown, was put in more of a traditional WWE babyface role, and started killing it like she did back in NXT. She hasn't had to work underneath a whole lot, and frankly, few wrestlers can make her do that believably, but she's been really good at taking bad situations, like having to wrestle Lana a bunch of times or feuding with Nattie Neidhart, and made them bearable. Flair pleasantly surprised me after the Superstar Shakeup.

Bad Luck Fale - I've turned a corner on Fale bigtime. He's not going to dazzle in singles matches, but put him in one of those patented New Japan big tags, and he becomes super fun.

Kurt Angle - I know I've soured on Angle since like 2003 quite a bit, but it was good seeing him back in WWE, even if he was just there to look doe-eyed into a camera and read whatever canned script he was there to read as general manager. But at least I knew he was somewhere where they'd at least take the minimum care of him. I don't wanna lose him yet.

Fabian Aichner - I'm glad to see he got signed after the CWC, as he was impressive in his short showing in that tournament. Wrestling needs guys like him who come out of places that aren't name hubs and still show that this world everyone shares still has surprises left in it.

Booker T - Honestly, I wasn't the biggest Booker fan in the world when he took over for David Otunga during the Superstar Shakeup. That being said, his shtick kinda won me over by the end of the year. I don't think he changed, but it was I who managed my expectations a little differently. When paired with Corey Graves and Michael Cole, he adds a bit of spice to the proceedings. Cole and Graves do the heavy lifting on getting the stories over, and Booker just comes out of leftfield with hot takes for amusement value that give a bit of a distraction during a three-plus hour show. It can get grating at times, but man, he actually has a place in that RAW booth. God bless him.

The Whisper - I didn't know what to make of him, but he won me over over the course of the Chikara season. Doing an identity theft angle (which is basically what the whole thing with Ophidian/Ourobouros was) is uncharted territory, and it worked in part because of how well Whisper played it. He feels like a replacement to Kevin Condron, a provocateur character that is good at getting under people's skins. I don't hate it so far.

Paige - It's hard not to feel for Paige, having spent a whole year of her career lost to injuries and taking the brunt of her bosses frustrations with her now ex-boyfriend. I mean, she's been easily surpassed by nearly everyone who came through NXT after her, but that doesn't mean she's not a good performer who can bring the heat to secondary programs on RAW, which is what that show is going to need if it wants to have a viable women's division.

Dr. Wagner, Jr. - I'll be the first to admit that he wasn't my cup of coffee on Lucha Underground, but honestly, I can't get enough of him as Hot Lucha Grandfather: The Meme. It was a huge bright spot of levity and humor in this ratfuckingly terrible and depressing 2017.

Shinsuke Nakamura - Look, you can get mad at him for not redoing the Kota Ibushi match from WrestleKingdom 9 (or even the Sami Zayn match from Takeover: Dallas) every night, but he's never been about that life, even in New Japan. Sure, I find it disappointing that Nakamura hasn't put on the jets like in the Zayn match in WWE, but he's still enjoyable for the most part. The Jinder Mahal matches were the best Mahal has looked in any match during his reign outside of the AJ Styles feud, and that John Cena match before SummerSlam was a perfect TV main event. I think he's a victim of heightened expectation, even if without them, he's still been a bit lackluster since coming over.

Matt Riddle - It feels like the bloom has come off his rose a bit, but Riddle still has brought it at a high level all year long. He's the kind of guy that wrestling needs at its vanguard more than, say, Cody Rhodes. Does he burn bridges with promoters? Is that a bad thing for a wrestler to have the cards in his hand rather than the capital? I would say no, it's not a bad thing at all. I hope he never signs with WWE, even if he keeps working WWE-adjacent "indies."

The Big Show - All you need to know about the difference between Big Show and Kane is their Braun Strowman matches in 2017.

Lio Rush - Sure, he might be a punk, but he's a punk that's really good at wrestling. He's not racist, he's not an abuser. He just posted some matches he wasn't supposed to, acted full of himself, and tried to make a kayfabe tweet regarding a peer's release. He's also younger than most people roasting him for his mistakes. In a world where abusers skate and have people defending them, I think you can let Rush go for being a bit brusque or wet behind the ears.

Marti Belle - The showing in the Mae Young Classic, while not really that good, isn't representative of her. I also thought it got blown out of proportion. She's a solid hand who just had a bad night.

Juan Francisco de Coronado - Fans have been grumbling about his title reign, but in all honesty, he's not the worst option to have an overbearing, Triple H-esque reign of villainy. He knows how to get heat which is rare on the indies for a heel, plus he's an ace worker. I've long been on the Juan Train, and I'm glad he's on top.

John Cena - I find the pendulum swing from utter hatred to folk heroism for Cena in the last year or so to be rich and hilarious. The truth is Cena was never really that bad, and he's been having great matches when most of the maladjusted dorks in the crowd were still chanting "CENA SUCKS" at him. But I still appreciate him for the most part when he's around nowadays. I just kinda wish he'd keep that shooting gun holstered...

Rory Gulak - He's been a nice addition to the Chikara continuity. I hope he sticks around and continues to bring that amateur flair as a contrast to all the dudes in hoods.

Ethan Page - I admit, he's won me over, mainly because of his dedication to being a heel on an indie show. It sucks that he left EVOLVE, but hey, I'm not sure I'd want to be on that ship right now anyway.

Nia Jax - The amount of growth she's gone through in the last two years is stunning to the point where she's not just someone who looks good wailing on Bayley, but someone who's a good wrestler flat out.

Adam Cole - He feels like the right fit for WWE, which is why his NXT signing made a lot of sense. He got a lot of flak in Ring of Honor and Pro Wrestling Guerrilla for not being as "indie" as even his running buddies Kevin Steen, Kyle O'Reilly, and the Young Bucks, but the dude is always enjoyable at least.

Michael Cole - Another Cole who gets maligned a bit, but no one really gets the nuances of WWE commentary and balancing getting his own voice in and having to deal with Vince McMahon barking in his headset. Is he corny sometimes? Obviously. He's a company man and a dude that wasn't even hip when he was the age when he should've been. But the man does good work, and when he's in there with a guy who complements him like Corey Graves, few people in the business right now come close to being able to call a match as well as he does.

Katsuyori Shibata - I'm still bummed that his career is probably over all over a shoot headbutt. I loved his work but for Christ's sake, everyone's in on the joke nowadays, and if they are't, they're too young to know the difference.

Percy Watson - It's chic to bust on the "third Black guy in the booth" in WWE, but all three of them are actually good at their jobs. Watson gets the most shit, and it baffles me because he's far and away the best guy on the NXT team. He's better focused on getting a story over than Mauro Ranallo, and he's both way more enthusiastic than Nigel McGuinness and way less likely to mention The Troubles as a positive in the development of a wrestler's career. I'll admit the beginning of his career in the booth was a bit too extra-generic, but he's definitely getting more and more of a knowledge base so that he's not just pumping out aphorisms.

Logan Easton Leroux/Race Jaxon - He's found his true calling as a heel, especially as Leroux. Who'd have thought that playing up a privileged rich boy would play well as a bad guy in front of a crowd of monetarily depressed indie wrestling fans who can't afford Ticketmaster surcharges to go see WWE shows.

Jason Jordan - Honestly, he had a lot mileage left as Chad Gable's nuclear hot tag, but man, I am digging this transformation he's making into a conniving failson. WWE may not have started out pushing him in that direction, and who knows, maybe McMahon is dumb enough to think that he can somehow get Jordan over as a good guy. But I feel like at least Jordan is reading the room right, which feels important.

Allie Kat - I don't care if she made disparaging comments at Wawa on Twitter. I dig the commitment to bringing Maureen Ponderosa to a wrestling ring.

Mojo Rawley - I find it insulting that everyone only started liking him when he threatened to kill Zack Ryder on Twitter. What did Ryder ever do to you? I maintain that outside of like the first few months of his NXT tenure, he's always been good. Just because he wasn't a workrate fiend who superfluously worked limbs and had a bunch of 1990s AJPW finishers as transition moves doesn't mean he wasn't an enjoyable watch. But yeah, I'm definitely intrigued where he's going to take his new oeuvre. If he puts as much into it as he did the jolly big guy who loved Weird Twitter Shitposting Humor, he'll do just fine.

Pete Dunne - I feel like my pushback against him being named the greatest wrestler in the history of life and history is misinterpreted as not liking him. Dunne is just fine, and oftentimes has great matches even if not in the trappings of something more meaningful. He's clearly among the vanguard of that English scene, and at least if he's a piece of shit like Will Ospreay is, he's doing a far better job of hiding it.

Aleister Black - He feels like he's just hitting a stride in NXT. I remember kinda enjoying him on the indies but not really getting him, but he's been pretty good on NXT, especially in the context of the Velveteen Dream feud. I just hope that once he gets to the main roster, McMahon doesn't go heavy-handed on the "HE'S NOT GOOD BUT HE'S NOT EVIL HURRRRRR" shit they laid at his doorstep upon his initial NXT television debut.

Kazuchika Okada - Like, I don't get the six-star frenzy from him. He feels like the absolute best possible Randy Orton, which I swear isn't a slam on him. But I mean, I don't hate watching him, and I think he's fine to put on top of a company like New Japan. He definitely gets how to be a wrestler, not just a worker. And man, he should get a medal for getting something watchable out of Cody Rhodes in Long Beach.

Roman Reigns - I wish I could just enjoy Reigns for what he is, but you fucking people just gotta make him a talking point, don't you? Just shut the fuck up about his push and if you really wanna talk about what WWE is doing wrong or right (mostly wrong), look at the people running it. For fuck's sake. Goddammit.

And The Rest: AJ Styles, Aliyah, Allysin Kay/Sienna, Anthony Greene, Anthony Henry, Apollo Crews, Arik Cannon, Ariya Daivari, Authors of Pain, Ayesha Raymond, Baron Corbin, Beer City Bruiser, Bobby Fish, Bobby Roode, Brian Kendrick, Brie Bella, Buddy Murphy, BUSHI, Byron Saxton, Cage, Cajun Crawdad, Cezar Bononi, Cheerleader Melissa/Mariposa, Cheeseburger, Christopher Daniels, Colt Cabana, Crossbones, Curtis Axel, Darren Young, DASH Chisako, David Finlay, David Otunga, David Starr, Dean Ambrose, Dez Peloton, DJ Z, Dominic Garrini, Donovan Dijak, Dragon Azteca, Jr., Drew McIntyre, Ember Moon, Epico, Eric Young, Erick Rowan, Everett Connors, Famous B, Finn Bálor, Flex Rumblecrunch, Frankie Kazarian, Goldberg, Goldust, Gran Akuma, Greg Hamilton, Guerrillas of Destiny, Hallowicked, Hangman Page, Hermit Crab, Hideo Itami, Hiroshi Tanahashi, Ho Ho Lun, Hornswoggle, Hot Sauce Williams, Hype Rockwell, Icarus, Jack Evans, Jack Gallagher, Jack Swagger, Jaka, James Ellsworth, Jason Kincaid, Jay White, Jeff Hardy, Jeremy Leary, Jessica James, Jessicka Havok, Jigsaw, Jimmy Jacobs, Jody Fleisch, Johnny Kidd, Jojo, Jon Davis, Kavita Devi, Kay Lee Ray, Kevin Owens, Killer Elite Squad, Killshot/Shane Strickland, King Cuerno, Kobald, Kobra Moon/Thunder Rosa, Kona Reeves, KUSHIDA, Kyle O'Reilly, Lince Dorado, Liv Morgan, Los Ice Creams, Lucas Calhoun, LuFisto, Luke Harper, Mandy Rose, Marty the Moth, Mascarita Sagrada, Matt Hardy, Matt Taven, Max Smashmaster, Merlok, Mickie James, Mike Kanellis, Mike Rome, Mil Muertes, Minoru Suzuki, Missile Assault Man, Motor City Machine Guns, Mr. Touchdown, Naomi, Neville, Nikki Bella, No Way Jose, Officer Warren Barksdale, Oleg the Usurper, Ouroboros, Paul Ellering, Paul London, Penta El Zero M, Pimpanela Escarlata, PJ Black, Primo, Princesa Sugehit, Proletariat Boar of Moldova, Rachel Ellering, Raul Mendoza, Reina Gonzalez, Rey Mysterio, Rhea Ripley, Rhett Titus, Rick Roland/Rex Lawless, Rock Lobster, Roderick Strong, Rusev, Ryusuke Taguchi, Sage Beckett, Sammy Guevara, SANADA, Santana Garrett, Sawyer Fulton, Sean Maluta, Serena Deeb, Shayna Baszler, Shelton Benjamin, SHO and YOH, Silas Young, Sin Cara, Sloan Caprice/Mike Verna, Solo Darling, Son Of Havoc, Space Monkey, Street Profits, Tajiri, TAKA, Taynara Conti, The Batiri, The Ealy Brothers, The Usos, Thomas Sharp/Blaster McMassive, Tian Bing, Titan, Titus O'Neil, TM61, Tom Phillips, Tony Chimel, Tony Nese, Toru Yano, Travis Huckabee, Vinnie Massaro, Volador, Jr., Wesley Blake, Wheeler Yuta, YOSHI-HASHI, Yuji Nagata, Zeda
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Your Midweek Links: Happy New Year!

January 3, 2018, 7:00 am
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Drink it in, the WrestleKingdom debut of Jericho, man
Photo Credit: WWE.com
Hey, it's the first hump day of the year. You're probably still getting your sea legs under you back at work after a prolonged holiday break. You need something to get you through to the first of about 50 or so weekends of the year. Thankfully, I have the antidote for you. Links! Links as far as the eye can see! Check out all the best writing in wrestling and ease into your weekend the right way.

Hey, I know TWB took a couple of weeks off, but catch up with the YEAR END BLOWOUT here! [The Wrestling Blog]

WrestleKingdom is tomorrow! Ian Williams writes about how the Battle of Winnipeg is taking the event global for New Japan Pro Wrestling. [VICE Sports]

And hey, if you wanna know about the American done well for himself in New Japan, Juice Robinson, Guilherme Jaeger has your hookup right here. [Medium]

David Bixenspan reviews all the biggest stories from wrestling in the last year, capped off by Vince McMahon selling off WWE stock to do something absolutely insane. [Deadspin]

What were the best feuds in 2017? Troy Taroff has your answer right here. [The Wrestling Estate]

Chris Trew wants to see more WWE wrestlers head to the ring in special vehicles, and I for one don't blame him. [Medium]

John Dvorak sat down with one of WWN Live's jacks of all trades, Trevin Adams, for an informative interview. [The Spectacle of Excess]

WWE has spent a lot of ink telling the Bullet Club to cease and desist, and now after WWE co-opted the Club's hashtag on its official Twitter account, the Young Bucks have reason to do the same, reports Sean Reuter. [Cageside Seats]

NON-WRESTLING #1: Kyle Kensing looks at Central Florida's Peach Bowl win over Auburn and laments that it may never get a fair shake at the national playoff, even if it goes unbeaten next year. [The Open Man]

NON-WRESTLING #2: The Last Jedi is getting mostly rave reviews from people who matter, continuing the robust critical and financial legacy of the new Star Wars films. It'll never happen, but what if, as Elle Collins fantasy-cast here, they redid Episode IV? [SyFy Wire]
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Search

The 2017 Bloggie Awards

January 3, 2018, 9:30 am
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The Wrestler of the Year!
Photo Credit: WWE.com
It's that time of year again, when I give out my awards for the best stuff to happen in wrestling in a calendar year. The Bloggie Awards are back, baybay! Before I start, a primer on what the Bloggies are and aren't:
  • The Bloggies are NOT a measure of who drew money or drove business. Look to the Observer for that scope.
  • The Bloggies are NOT a measure of kayfabe accomplishment. Pro Wrestling Illustrated has that covered like a boss.
  • The Bloggies are NOT crowd-sourced or openly voted upon. They're chosen by me and me alone, so if anyone has a problem, take it up with me.
  • The Bloggies ARE a measure of who did the most to advance the ART of wrestling. Who told the best stories? Who talked with the silverest of tongues? Who wrestled the best matches? Who had the biggest emotional impact? These are the questions that these awards have set out to answer.
And now, the awards, with nominees and winners!

Wrestler of the Year - This is the award for the wrestler who excelled highest critically inside and out of the ring.
Previous Winners:
2009 – Chris Jericho
2010 – The Miz
2011 – CM Punk
2012 – Daniel Bryan
2013 – The Shield
2014 – Sami Zayn
2015 – Sasha Banks
2016 – Broken Matt Hardy

This year's nominees are:
  • Asuka
  • Braun Strowman
  • Drew Gulak
  • Kenny Omega
  • Nick Gage
  • The Miz
  • Tetsuya Naito
  • Toni Storm
And the winner is... Drew Gulak!
I thought long and hard about this, and honestly, in a weird year, why not go with the weirdest candidate possible? Gulak has flirted with most valuable wrestler in his promotion before, and contrary to popular belief, he didn't just do it via his excellent ring-work. In fact, the Drew Gulak for a Better Combat Zone era portended this win because the Drew Gulak for a Better 205 Live is an updated version of it. Of course, Gulak brought the goods in the ring, even if it was at a lower level than in 2016, when he was one of the top two guys in my entire purview of wrestling, but it was his work that made 205 Live and the cruiserweight division in general must-see that put him ahead of the pack. Whether it be getting over PowerPoint presentations or giving Enzo Amore an improved tag team partner on interviews, Gulak did so much heavy lifting to elevate 205 Live even if he was never really the focal point from a booking standpoint.

Ricky Steamboat Award - Named for one of the most universally respected and beloved professional wrestlers of all-time, this award is for the wrestler who excelled the most between the ropes during matches to tell stories and build characters through the physical art of professional wrestling.
Previous Winners:
2009 – Christian
2010 – Daniel Bryan/Bryan Danielson
2011 – Dolph Ziggler
2012 – ACH
2013 – Daniel Bryan
2014 – Sami Zayn
2015 – Sasha Banks
2016 – Fred Yehi

This year's nominees are:
  • AJ Styles
  • Johnny Gargano
  • Tomohiro Ishii
  • The Usos (Jimmy and Jey)
  • Zack Sabre, Jr.
And the winner is... Johnny Gargano!
Gargano picked up where he left off last year and kept going upwards. He finished up his run as a tag team worker with the best match at Takeover: Chicago against the Authors of Pain (yeah, I said it), and then after some time off to sell a beating from his now-former tag partner Tommaso Ciampa, he seamlessly transitioned into an ace singles worker on the NXT roster. It's possible that he was in the best tag match (the aforementioned AOP match) and best singles match on the NXT roster in 2017 (vs. Andrade "Cien" Almas at Takeover: Brooklyn). When the bar for match quality in NXT is stratospherically high to begin with and you clear it twice in two separate divisions, you're a special worker. Gargano has become the surest thing in NXT and possibly WWE.

Talker of the Year - For the wrestler who showed the most prowess at inciting a crowd, building a story, or entertaining the audience via the spoken word.
Previous winners:
2009 – CM Punk
2010 – The Miz
2011 – CM Punk
2012 – Damien Sandow
2013 – Zeb Colter
2014 – Stephanie McMahon
2015 – Enzo Amore
2016 – The Miz

This year's nominees are:
  • Drew Gulak
  • Juice Robinson
  • Nick Gage
  • Samoa Joe
  • The Miz
And the winner is... Drew Gulak!
Anyone surprised by this hasn't been paying attention or were lulled into a false reality when Gulak was mostly called upon to wrestle and not necessarily talk in EVOLVE last year. However, the heights to which he rose on the mic and the opportunities he got may be surprising, especially since Miz, Samoa Joe, Enzo Amore, Alexa Bliss, Kevin Owens, and Chris Jericho all had strong years on the mic in the same company. Gulak's command of timing, both as a solo act and complementing Amore, helped him win the award this year.

Independent Wrestler of the Year - For the wrestler who excelled the most outside the confines of the corporate environment, thus promoting the critical and artistic growth of wrestling.
Previous Winners:
2009 – Austin Aries
2010 – Claudio Castagnoli
2011 – Sara del Rey
2012 – Rachel Summerlyn
2013 – Chuck Taylor
2014 – Candice LeRae
2015 – Jimmy Rave
2016 – Matt Riddle

This year's nominees are:
  • Joey Janela
  • Keith Lee
  • Matt Riddle
  • Martina the Session Moth
  • Nick Gage
And the winner is... Nick Gage!
Honestly, Gage going back to jail in 2016 was bullshit. Yeah, I know the hot piss test was a violation of his parole, but at the same time, pot should be legal everywhere, and everyone imprisoned for it should be let go from jail. That being said, Gage picked up where he left off, providing a strong presence for multiple promotions. He was the most important guy for Game Changer Wrestling in the second half of the year, which is saying something cuz Joey Janela was still working them. Few people on the indies have the electric buzz that Gage has without any corporate backing whatsoever.

Tag Team of the Year - For the tandem that in addition to displaying optimal entertainment value and wrestling prowess on their own, also displayed the best teamwork and cohesion as a unit both in and out of the ring.
Previous Winners:
2009 – Chris Jericho and the Big Show
2010 – The Motor City Machine Guns (Alex Shelley and Chris Sabin)
2011 – The Young Bucks (Matt and Nick Jackson)
2012 – The Super Smash Brothers (Player Uno and Stupefied)
2013 – The Young Bucks
2014 – The World's Cutest Tag Team (Candice LeRae and Joey Ryan)
2015 – New Day (Big E, Kofi Kingston, and Xavier Woods)
2016 – The Revival (Dash Wilder and Scott Dawson)

This year's nominees are:
  • The Authors of Pain (Akam and Rezar)
  • The Bar (Cesaro and Sheamus)
  • Best Friends (Chuck Taylor and Trent)
  • New Day (Big E, Kofi Kingston, and Xavier Woods)
  • The Usos (Jimmy and Jey)
And the winners are... The Usos!
The Usos have always been great tag workers, even when everyone got sick of them in their bullshit WWE babyface character trappings. However, they not only stepped up their games after turning to a harder edge character-wise, but they ascended even higher in the ring, putting on some of the best tag matches not only in WWE, but in the world. Their feud with New Day almost made Smackdown worth watching every week instead of just for the PPVs.

Manager of the Year - For the character who did the best to enhance another wrestler's status and artistic value without actually being a full-time wrestler.
Previous Winners
2012 – Veronica Ticklefeather
2013 – Chris Trew
2014 – Sidney Bakabella
2015 – Catrina
2016 – Stokely Hathaway

This year's nominees are:
  • Catrina
  • Cousin Mikey
  • Paul Ellering
  • Stokely Hathaway
  • Zelina Vega
And the winner is... Stokely Hathaway!
Big Stoke wins the award for the second year in a row because the man just doesn't stop hustling. His work in EVOLVE could have netted him at least a nomination if not the win, but he went and owned the Powerbomb TV indie circuit with his iteration of the Dream Team there. He's even in North Carolina as part of the burgeoning CWF Mid-Atlantic promotion. He's not just omnipresent either; he gets his guys more over than they would be without him, even naturally talented dudes like Jonathan Gresham or MJF.

Group of the Year - For the group, stable, or cadre of wrestlers who best exemplified teamwork, continuity, and entertainment value.

Previous Winners:
2009 – Team FIST (Chuck Taylor, Gran Akuma, Icarus)
2010 – Bruderschaft des Kreuzes (Claudio Castagnoli, Ares, Tursas, Sara del Rey, Daizee Haze, Tim Donst, Jakob Hammermeier, Lince Dorado, Pinkie Sanchez, Dieter von Stiegerwalt)
2011 – Not Given
2012 – The Submission Squad (Davey Vega, Evan Gelistico, Gary Jay, Pierre Abernathy)
2013 – The Shield (Dean Ambrose, Roman Reigns, Seth Rollins)
2014 – Sidney Bakabella's Wrecking Crew (Blaster McMassive, Flex Rumblecrunch, Jaka, Max Smashmaster, Oleg the Usurper, Sidney Bakabella)
2015 – New Day (Big E, Kofi Kingston, and Xavier Woods)
2016 – The Broken Hardys (Jeff Hardy, Matt Hardy, King Maxel, Reby Hardy, and Señor Benjamin)

This year's nominees are:
  • The Dream Team (John Skylar, Jonathan Gresham, MJF, [and Stokely Hathaway])
  • LOS INGOBERNABLES de Japon (BUSHI, EVIL, Hiromu Takahashi, SANADA, Tetsuya Naito [and Daryl])
  • The Miztourage (Bo Dallas, Curtis Axel, The Miz, [and Maryse])
  • New Day (Big E, Kofi Kingston, Xavier Woods, [and Francesca])
  • SANitY (Alexander Wolfe, Eric Young, Killian Dain, and Nikki Cross)
And the winners are... LOS INGOBERNABLES de Japon!
New Japan had a very good year, but even among the overall up-and-down excellence, LIJ stood out. Naito was one of the most entertaining main event guys across any promotion, Takahashi did great work for the juniors, and EVIL's rise up the card was something to behold. Plus, Daryl becoming a pop culture icon in Japan counts for something.

HOSS of the Year - For the wrestler who exemplified the essence of HOSS with nobility, pride, and massive feats of strength.
Previous Winner:
2014 – Rusev
2015 – Cesaro
2016 – Braun Strowman

This year's nominees are:
  • Braun Strowman
  • Cesaro
  • Keith Lee
  • Otis Dozovic
  • Tomohiro Ishii
And the winner is... Braun Strowman!
HE AROSE UNSCATHED FROM ONE TRASH TRUCK AND TRAVELED ACROSS THE LAND IN A SECOND TRASH TRUCK HOW CAN YOU DENY THE AWESOME POWER OF BRAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNNNNNNNN?

The New to Me Award - For the best rookie or heretofore new wrestler to major promotions known to me in the last year or so.
Previous Winners:
2009 – Sheamus
2010 – Wade Barrett
2011 – Mia Yim
2012 – Mark Angel/Angelosetti
2013 – The Estonian Thunder Frog
2014 – "Smooth Sailing" Ashley Remington
2015 – Kevin Condron
2016 – Matt Riddle

This year's nominees are:
  • AJ Gray
  • Bianca Belair
  • Lars Sullivan
  • Razerhawk
  • Travis Huckabee
And the winner is... Lars Sullivan!
I had a tough time choosing out of this field, because it was stronger than in previous years, but Sullivan gets the nod because he just sort of came out of NXT's Performance Center body quagmire and went straight into Braun Strowman overdrive. By the end of the year, he had a lot of people believing he could carry not only NXT, but a main roster brand with his combination of intensity and rage (roid rage?) as a monster to be reckoned with.

Santino Marella Award (formerly the Comedian of the Year) - For the wrestler/act that has done their best to make people laugh and master the art of wrestling comedy.
Previous Winners:
2009 – Santino Marella
2010 – Santino Marella
2011 – Colt Cabana
2012 – 3.0
2013 – Los Ice Creams
2014 – Damien Sandow
2015 – New Day
2016 – Chuck Taylor™

This year's nominees are:
  • Kikutaro
  • Los Ice Creams (El Hijo del Ice Cream and Ice Cream, Jr.)
  • New Day
  • Ugly Ducklings (Cousin Mikey, Lance Lude, and Rob Killjoy)
And the winners are... The Ugly Ducklings!
The Ducklings definitely are serious competitors between the bells, but honestly, comedy doesn't just mean you're coming relief. The group, led by the energetic Cousin Mikey on the outside, provide an electric and enthusiastic boost to any card they're on. Point blank, they put smiles on faces.

Feud of the Year - For the rivalry between two or more wrestlers or groups of wrestlers that best exemplified storytelling or match quality.
Previous Winners:
2009 – CM Punk vs. Jeff Hardy
2010 – Kevin Steen (and Steve Corino) vs. El Generico (and Colt Cabana)
2011 – CM Punk vs. John Cena
2012 – Daniel Bryan vs. Kane
2013 – Antonio Cesaro vs. Sami Zayn
2014 – Chikara vs. The Flood
2015 – Bayley vs. Sasha Banks
2016 – DIY vs. The Revival

This year's nominees are:
  • Braun Strowman vs. Roman Reigns
  • Chris Jericho vs. Kevin Owens
  • Kazuchika Okada vs. Kenny Omega
  • New Day vs. the Usos
  • Ophidian/Ourobouros vs. The Whisper
And the winner is... Braun Strowman vs. Roman Reigns!
By the time SummerSlam rolled around, they'd been feuding and in singles matches against each other off and on since Fastlane, and unlike most WWE feuds of that ilk, most people weren't tired of them yet. They came together for not only some of the most intense matches of the year, but some of the biggest and most impactful moments, most of them surrounding an ambulance, which in the past has been a cursed item for WWE.

Commentator of the Year - For the announcer who best was able to convey the action in the ring with clarity, charm, and bemusement.
Previous Winners:
2009 – Matt Striker
2010 – Bryce Remsburg
2011 – Excalibur
2012 – Bryce Remsburg
2013 – Excalibur
2014 – Eamon Paton
2015 – Eamon Paton
2016 – Mike Quackenbush

This year's nominees are:
  • Booker T
  • Corey Graves
  • Michael Cole
  • Percy Watson
  • Tom Philips
And the winner is... Corey Graves!
Yeah, I know this may be more an indictment of not watching much of non-WWE programming this year, but at the same time, whom else would I have nominated? Lucha Underground's commentary team is awful. New Japan on AXS TV is dreadful. Besides, Graves may be the best color commentator going, hitting a groove that hasn't really been seen since the salad days of the late Bobby Heenan. WWE has had a down year on the whole, but commentary is a plus, and Graves has led the vanguard.

Moment of the Year - This award is for the point on a show that provided emotional impact, memorability, and contribution of overall quality to the show.
Previous Winners:
2009 – Jeff Hardy gives CM Punk a Swanton Bomb from the top of a ladder in the ring to the announce table
2010 – The Nexus debuts
2011 – CM Punk exits Chicago with the WWE Championship held hostage
2012 – Matthew Palmer leaps from the balcony at the Mohawk and takes Rachel Summerlyn with him
2013 – Mark Henry suckers John Cena into believing he'd retire and attacks him
2014 – Chikara is reborn at National Pro Wrestling Day as the promotion's faithful, led by the Submission Squad and Icarus, beat back The Flood
2015 – Sasha Banks steals Izzy's headband during the ironman match at Takeover Respect
2016 – Sendai Girls win King of Trios

This year's nominees are:
  • Braun Strowman flips over an ambulance containing Roman Reigns
  • Keith Lee pounces Josh Briggs into the bottom rope, breaking it
  • Kenny Omega counters the Rainmaker by going limp
  • Kevin Owens gives Chris Jericho a new "List" with only Jericho's name on it, betraying him during the Festival of Friendship
  • Undertaker leaves his duster and hat in the ring as he leaves WrestleMania for possibly the final time
And the winner is... Braun Strowman flips over an ambulance containing Roman Reigns!
If you wanted a singular moment where a dude just came out and made everyone think of him as "the guy," it was this eminently replayable instance where Strowman tipped over an ambulance. It was already perhaps the WWE segment of the year (depending on how one felt about the Festival of Friendship) with Strowman whipping Reigns' ass around the arena screaming "I'M NOT FINISHED WITH YOU YET!" But the visual of Strowman going full Hulk (Incredible, not Hogan) and throwing over an emergency vehicle stuck with not only me, but a bunch of other viewers who if they weren't fans of Strowman by then became ones instantly.

Promotion/Brand of the Year - For the company who best furthered the creative, critical, and/or qualitative boundaries of professional wrestling in the calendar year.
Previous Winners:
2009 – ECW (WWE)
2010 – Chikara
2011 – Chikara
2012 – Anarchy Championship Wrestling
2013 – Beyond Wrestling
2014 – Chikara
2015 – Lucha Underground
2016 – Chikara

This year's nominees are:
  • Beyond Wrestling
  • Chikara
  • New Japan Pro Wrestling
  • NOVA Pro Wrestling
  • WWE NXT
And the winner is... WWE NXT!
NXT has always been WWE's prestige arm, but at times, it's fallen by the wayside, needing guide dogs to get it from Takeover to Takeover. In 2017, the brand put together at least nine straight months of excellent weekly television in addition to the manically awesome slate of Takeovers. Again, each Takeover was excellent in its own way, but weekly television wasn't necessarily bound to them. Not only did great matches happen serially, but wrestlers got chances to shine even without the promise of matches happening for them at the tentpoles. NXT did a lot to dispel its criticisms of prior years and really hit a high note last year.
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Pro Wrestling SKOOPZ on The Wrestling Blog: Vol. 4, Issue 1

January 3, 2018, 12:20 pm
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ARE YOU READY FOR WRESTLEKINGDOM?
Photo Credit: Scott Finkelstein
HAPPY NEW YEAR, HORBIACS. New year, but SAME OL' HORB FLERBMINBER, back at you mining them scoops like they need to be mined. CONTRARY TO RUMORS SPREAD ONLINE, I didn't take the last two weeks of the year off. It's just NEWS DIDN'T HAPPEN. It's true, sometimes, the world stops, especially when I'm off attempting to break the world record of cans of Hamm's beer drunk in one sitting. Did you know Andre the Giant set the record back in 1978 and every year I try and fail to break it? THAT SON OF A BITCH COULD PUT THE BREW AWAY.

Anyway, if you want the partial Horb experience, then by all means, JUST READ THE NEWSLETTER. However, if you want it all and you want it NOW, then follow me on Twitter Dot Com, @HorbFlerbminber. You'll know when and where I post screenshots of The Iron Sheik posting antisemitic rants before deleting them. If you guess which ones are doctored and which ones are real, you can get a prize! You can also get back issues of the newsletter if you believe in yourself and if you have $123.95 for shipping and handling. What issues can you order this week? It's anyone's guess!

And now, the news:

- WRESTLEKINGDOM PREVIEW: My god, I am on hour 16 of my priapism in anticipation.

- Chris Jericho dedicated his match against Kenny Omega at the event to Chris Benoit, and, well, even I know that's in poor taste.

- WWE announced the first two teams for the Mixed Match Challenge, but I didn't catch them because I spent the entire time begging, PLEADING with Vince McMahon to make sure that he didn't CATER TO THE PERVERTS and have only men wrestle men and women wrestle women. It turned out I was talking to George Hamilton's statue at Madame Tussauds.

- The women's Royal Rumble will have 30 entrants. Of course it will, these broads need to have everything like the men do, don't they? This just in, Horb Flerbminber will now go on mandatory sensitivity tra... oh goddammit, not again.

- Finn Bálor reunited with Karl Anderson and Luke Gallows in a six-man tag. Original plans called for the three to wear Bullet Club shirts and tear up pictures of the Young Bucks and Cody Rhodes before the match, but Triple H was able to talk Vince McMahon out of the idea by giving him his daily dose of ether and putting him to sleep on his cot in Gorilla position.

- Braun Strowman missed several shows with "really bad flu," and Wade Keller is already over here bitching that he should've toughed it out because Strowman should never look weak and always look invincible.

- AJ Styles must defend the WWE Championship in a handicap match vs. Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn at the Royal Rumble. When notified of the match, he almost dropped the hard R-bomb before being explained he wasn't actually wrestling a handicapped wrestler.

- Enzo Amore missed RAW and 205 Live this week with what WWE officials are calling "a really fuckin' nasty hangover."

- WWE stock prices reached their highest point since it went public, but once I flood the market selling all 30,831 of my shares at discount pricing, it won't stay there. MUHUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

- Xavier Woods posted a video featuring Leva "Blue Pants" Bates in advance of his United States Championship tournament match against Aiden English, showing that he's just as disgusting a mark as she is.

- Stephanie McMahon invited Chrissy Teigen to WrestleMania after the supermodel said on Twitter that the Mania she went to was the most fun she'd ever had in her life. What McMahon didn't tell her that the invitation was to be in a wrestling match where McMahon would beat her in 30 seconds, thus becoming the premiere first lady of pop culture.

- Tommaso Ciampa ominously wished Johnny Gargano a happy new year on Twitter by telling him to suck his balls. No wait, that can't be right, that's what I tweeted at Todd... Martin... oh no. OH NO.

- Cody Rhodes said on Twitter that knows the venue for his big show with the Bullet Club, but if you want to find out, you have to "kiss the rings, peasant."

- Ring of Honor unveiled new title belts, and well, maybe they actually shouldn't have.

- David Starr called out Matthias Glass, an indie wrestler who isn't Jewish but employs a stereotypically Hasidic gimmick. Glass responded by saying "Oy gevalt, meshugginah, what is it with these people being so quick to manufacture outrage."

- Starr wrestled Joey Janela at Beyond Wrestling right after midnight to complete the first match of 2018. As is tradition, the first match of the year included a thumbtack-studded dildo, which was a tradition going back to 1944, when Lou Thesz and Billy Whipper Watson first used the weapon in their New Year's match.

- Sid no-showed the Absolute Intense Wrestling show booked and themed around him last week. His excuse was that he couldn't travel thanks to President Donald Trump's Muslim ban. Little-known fact, Sid also converted to Islam when Antonio Inoki did in the '90s, so his excuse is definitely legit.

- Miesha Tate has announced that she's pregnant and that her new daughter will debut in the UFC's strawweight division against Birdie Jo Danielson at UFC 222 in a Daycare Center somewhere in Dagestan.

- Dana White has stated he wants to promote boxing in the coming year. "I mean, Don King already made a laughingstock out of the sport. What more damage can I do?"

- Bayley tweeted that her goal in 2018 was to grittily reboot herself, starting out by running Izzy over with a motorcycle.

- The Washington Capitals have started using Oney Lorcan's theme song as its official goal celebration tune, which is appropriate since the Caps have the same winning percentage in the playoffs as Lorcan has in NXT so far.

- Brian Pillman, Jr. made his pro wrestling debut on December 30 by brandishing a gun at Steve Austin's dog, Hershey.

- Impact ratings were up for the second straight week, as its strategy of getting its one viewer to tell a friend and to have those friends each tell another friend is working.

Last week's poll results are in, and 52 percent of you thought Kazuchika Okada was the wrestler of the year, while 26 percent thought it was Kenny Omega. Another ten percent answered Tetsuya Naito, eight percent said Hiroshi Tanahashi, and the four percent who said Roman Reigns have been executed via firing squad. This week:
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The 2017 TWB 100: Introduction Post and Call for Ballots

January 8, 2018, 6:00 am
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Will Styles repeat?
Photo Credit: WWE.com
Hello hello! For the ninth year, the TWB 100 looks to reign supreme upon the world of wrestling! For the uninitiated, the TWB 100 is a crowd-sourced, fan-voted, open-participation list that looks to rank wrestlers from the last calendar year (in this case, 2017) in terms of their performances in the ring as wrestlers/workers. That bolded part is important. It is not based on character development or promos or how much you liked that wrestler. It's based on the matches, the actual ability to tell a story in the ring. Participation is open to ANYONE who wishes to submit a ballot with few exceptions (if you have to ask if you're banned, you probably aren't). The following list are the criteria for voting, the rules if you will:
  1. The TWB 100 is based solely on a wrestler's performance between the bells in any wrestling contest. This includes move variety, execution, workrate, selling, bumping, timing, pacing, protecting the opponent, trash-talking and anything else that happens within the course of a wrestling match. Anything that happens in promos or segments outside the confines of a wrestling match should NOT be considered for ballot entries. It is also advised against using match booking in deciding placement on the ballot (i.e. don't use "well he/she wins too much" as rationale against their placement).
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  2. Content to be considered for ballots must have taken place between 1/1/17 at 12:00:00 AM to 12/31/17 at 11:59:59 PM inclusive, i.e. within the calendar year of 2017. That means the Beyond Wrestling show on New Year's Eve counts for this in its entirety EXCEPT for the David Starr vs. Joey Janela Fans Bring the Weapons match. That doesn't count! Consideration should also be limited to matches either held on the soil within the United States and Canada, or by promotions that were based in United States and Canada (i.e. Chikara or WWE in the United Kingdom, televised NXT house show footage from Japan/Australia, etc.) only. For the sake of those who watch wrestling from Puerto Rico, yes, that island should be considered as part of the United States for this exercise. This means one must only consider matches by New Japan Pro Wrestling talent that took place IN RING OF HONOR OR AT ANY OF THE TWO LONG BEACH SHOWS or by luchadores in LUCHA UNDERGROUND OR AMERICAN INDIES or by British wrestlers IN RING OF HONOR, EVOLVE, SMASH, OR OTHER AMERICAN COMPANIES. Do not rank Kazuchika Okada on strength of his SIX STAR MATCHES against Kenny Omega and so on and so forth.
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  3. Matches should be considered by the date they were actually worked except in the case of Lucha Underground or Chikara season 17, where you are to consider the date the match was aired on El Rey Network or released on Chikaratopia respectively.
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  4. Ballots shall have a minimum of 25 wrestlers named in order and a maximum of 100 wrestlers named in order. Ballots between those two numbers inclusive will be accepted with no questions, as long as they are ranked in order. Ballots with 24 or fewer and unordered ballots will be thrown out. Ballots with 101 or more will be pared down to 100.
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  5. No demarcation shall exist between male or female wrestlers. For the purposes of this ballot, anyone who wrestled in an eligible promotion for the time period given shall be considered eligible regardless of race, creed, gender, sexual orientation, size, weight class, or even species (I see you, Space Monkey, and I'm pouring one out for your year, Inter Species Wrestling).
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  6. If you want to list a tag team,you must list the individual members and NOT the unit. So, if you want to include the Ealy Brothers, vote for Gabriel Ealy and Uriel Ealy as separate entries on your list, not "Ealy Brothers" as one entry. All entries for a stable or tag team will be ignored on said ballot (or at the very least, I will e-mail you for clarification).
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  7. No eligibility requirements for submission of a ballot are in place. As long as the submitter likes and has watched wrestling in 2017, they're allowed to submit unless explicitly prohibited by TH. The list of people not allowed to vote is short and won't be publicized, but if you attempt to vote and are on my banned list, I will inform you privately.
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  8. Ballots can be sent to me, TH, via any means necessary, either through e-mail (tom DOT holzerman AT gmail DOT com), Facebook messages, written letter (for those who know my address), Twitter DM or any other ways of private contact.
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  9. The due date for ballots shall be Wednesday, January 17 at 11:59:59 PM local time (i.e., if I have it in my inbox by Thursday morning, January 18, you should be good).
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  10. The final list will be disseminated via slow release on TWB with blurbs written by ballot submitters. If you are interested in writing for the release, please let me know with your ballot. Your blurbs should be at least one paragraph explaining why you voted for that particular wrestler.
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  11. All ballots are subject to scrutiny by me, TH.
The above listed are the guidelines. They are simple, but one would be surprised how many people do not heed them and send in ballots that violate several rules. Last year, 62 voters submitted ballots. I would like that number to increase, even though that would mean more work for me. But nothing worth doing in life has been easy, right? The point is, the power is yours, in your opinions. Make it heard! Get the ballots up into triple digits. Tell friends. We got 500 wrestlers last year, and it was a hoot. Let's do it again!

For reference, the prior TWB 100 number one wrestlers are as follows:
2016: AJ Styles
2015: Sasha Banks
2014: Sami Zayn
2013: Daniel Bryan
2012: Daniel Bryan
2011: CM Punk
2010: Daniel Bryan/Bryan Danielson
2009: Chris Jericho

Get them ballots in! We're starting early this year so that 2016 is fresher in your minds, and also because outlets like Powerbomb TV exist getting footage up from massive amounts of promotions in record time within their happenings. Thank your distributor today by subbing to them.
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Twitter Request Line, Vol. 218

January 8, 2018, 9:45 am
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New Year's resolution? Less of this shitbag's main product, more of the underbelly and below
Photo Credit: WWE.com
It's Twitter Request Line time, everyone! I take to Twitter to get questions about issues in wrestling, past and present, and answer them on here because 140 characters can't restrain me, fool! If you don't know already, follow me @tholzerman, and wait for the call on Wednesday to ask your questions. Hash-tag your questions #TweetBag, and look for the bag to drop Thursday afternoon (most of the time). Without further ado, here are your questions and my answers:

Christmas was okay, but I'm hoping that 2018 is a better year all around for ya boy, TH. First, I hope to lose some weight and eat a little healthier. I also want to watch a more diverse palette of wrestling more often. Doing just WWE, or more specifically, WWE main roster regularly has warped my sense of enjoyment of wrestling. Part of it is because I'm a dad now, but I mean, I could spend more time watching wrestling, and less time watching wrestling on Mondays and Tuesdays. I spend so much time shitposting anyway. Either way, more 205 Live, more NXT, more indies, more Lucha Underground, more worldly stuff, less Vince McMahon-approved family drama with a churn of supporting characters.

Very carefully. It's how Rusev would want it.

CUZ I'D REALLY LIKE TO EAT IT. Sorry, I had a flashback to late '90s alt-rock radio. Anyway, cheese is generally good. The only cheese I don't like is the powdered shit that gets put on snacks, but is that really cheese, to be honest? They call it "cheese-based product" for a reason. Anyway, cheese makes most dishes it's served with better, and I am all for it.

Black Label Pro out in the Midwest seems to be a hot button place. It got a start last year, and it's been garnering a lot of praise over the last few months. It just crowned Filthy Tom Lawlor as its champion, which I approve of heartily, but more importantly, it showed at least some sensitivity towards non-privileged fans and wrestlers by ceasing ties with Nick Cutler, who came into a locker room and loudly boasted to the only three Black wrestlers on the roster that he had a pass to say the n-word. Cutler is White, for the record. It doesn't make BLP "woke," but at least it did better than some other promotions *cough* AAW and its mealy-mouthed explanation of its temporary non-booking of Michael Elgin *cough*. Hopefully, I'll get more into them as the year goes on.

Not so much a move, but a move exchange, I would outlaw wrestlers trading chops with each other with no defense, because holy shit, it's overdone. You would have to file for a permit to do it at the National Wrestling Service. It doesn't belong in every match, and yet if I go to an indie show with eight matches on it, it's done at least nine times a show. WWE isn't much better, because even though it's not in every match, those fucking agents are supposed to know better.

If just one move you're looking for, then I'd go for the Sling Blade, because no one does it well except for perhaps Hiroshi Tanahashi.

Scott, your website is tremendous, and I'm not mad at it because it looks like you already covered a lot of stuff there here already. Anyway, SURPRISE ENTRANTS:
  • Neville - It's too quiet on his front right now. The raging conspiracy theorist in me says that it's because he's making the biggest surprise entrance in the Rumble possible without it being a debut or non-current return.
  • Lars Sullivan - I don't think he's getting the NXT title track program down there. Whether it's as a soft debut/preview like Rusev got before his official call-up or the start for an introduction path into the Andre Battle Royale, Sullivan feels tailor-made for a spot in this Rumble.
  • Tommy Dreamer - The Rumble is in Philly, Philly is home of ECW, Dreamer has kept quite the good relationship with WWE over the years. I'm not saying he's a lock to be in, but if anyone tickles WWE's penchant for nostalgia this year, it's the Innovator of Violence.
Now, I would do surprise entrants for the women's Rumble, but that would impinge upon the next question....

From protected user @adamsgroove:
Who's winning the inaugural women's Royal Rumble? Any surprise entrants like Beth Phoenix or Kharma (Awesome Kong)? And if so, why?
So, the winner of the Rumble will come from three possible sources. First is Ronda Rousey, whom WWE is negotiating with, and who has been training for a pro wrestling career AT the Performance Center. If she debuts here (i.e. if she signs in time), she will win to set up a match with Asuka at WrestleMania. If she doesn't debut here, then the choice falls onto two wrestlers, one from each brand. Obviously, Asuka is the first choice, as it would be an alternate path for her into the women's marquee match at Mania against Rousey, who would debut and then defeat Alexa Bliss to get the title to make the match. The second choice might be out of the pale a bit, but Becky Lynch ticks a few boxes. One, I have a strong gut feeling that the Smackdown Women's Championship match will pit Horsewoman vs.  Horsewoman, Charlotte Flair vs. Lynch. Lynch winning the Rumble is the easiest way to get from point A to point B. Second, if Asuka vs. Rousey is so obvious it hurts for the RAW Women's Title match and you want a surprising winner, then Lynch is your woman. She's also fairly popular, so she in theory wouldn't cause backlash that say, I don't know, Natalya Neidhart would?

And now, the SURPRISE ENTRANTS:

  • Candice LeRae - Depending on who your sources are, she's either close to signing or has signed. One might think she'd go to NXT, especially since the Mae Young Classic left her cliffhanging with Shayna Baszler heat, but I think Philly and the Rumble crowd would know her enough to pop for her one time before she left for her Mr. Toad's Wild Ride at Full Sail, Center Stage, and the Saturdays before Big Four PPVs.
  • Kaitlyn - She's making a wrestling comeback, and she's actually booked for a few indie shows. I don't know if she'll make the comeback to WWE, but hey, that's never stopped the company from getting dudes in the men's Rumble in the past. She'll be a nice surprise for the live crowd and at least she and Big E will be able to reunite backstage once more.
  • One or Both Bella Twins - This is the "so obvious it hurts" choice. Nikki Bella is probably the lock, but what if the mind-distorting BRIEEEEE MOOOOOOOODE theme hit? It might happen. I'd put money on it.

Now, I'm not saying Kharma or Beth Phoenix won't be surprise entrants — Kharma has the POP CULTURE connection with GLOW, and Phoenix will be calling the Mixed Match Classic on Facebook Live — but I'm saying the other ones feel a bit more on the nose from where I sit. But I could be wrong. I often am.
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The Wrestling Blog's OFFICIAL Best in the World Rankings for January 8, 2018

January 8, 2018, 4:00 pm
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Let's see how long this lasts
Screenshot credit: WWE.com
Welcome to a feature I like to call "Best in the World" rankings. They're not traditional power rankings per se, but they're rankings to see who is really the best in the world, a term bandied about like it's bottled water or something else really common. They're rankings decided by me, and don't you dare call them arbitrary lest I smack the taste out of your mouth. Without further ado, here's this week's list:

1. Asuka (Last Poll: 4) - Asuka's partner for the Mixed Match Classic was announced today, The Miz. In addition to being the favorite team to win just because of how destruction and cheating form such a formidable duo, the possibility exists that at some point, Asuka will kick Miz's head clean off his shoulders for no other reason than she can, which is always primo.

2. Joey Janela (Last Poll: Not Ranked) - Missed in TWB's winter break was the first wrestling match of the year, David Starr vs. Janela in a fans bring the weapons match at Beyond Wrestling after the crack of midnight. One fan brought a dildo studded in thumbtacks, which is not only definitely not PG, but also the most Janela-appropriate weapon I've ever encountered in the history of knowing him and knowing wrestling.

3. Tetsuya Naito (Last Poll: Not Ranked) - Did Naito win the IWGP Championship in the Dome from Kazuchika Okada, even though Okada was in long-boys? Nope. Did he get the better of Chris Jericho after Y2J sneak-attacked him at New Year's Dash? Nope. But he still came out of the weekend looking just as tranquilo as he did coming into it.

4. Joel Embiid (Last Poll: 3) - Sure, the Sixers hit a bit of a skid lately, but blame that on the medical staff using leeches and alchemy instead of real medicine. Embiid has put the team on his back so much it's sore.

5. Roquan Smith (Last Poll: Not Ranked) - Tonight is the night Georgia looks to exercise the demons, win a title, and kick Bama in the dick to do it. The team's all-world linebacker may not seem to be a key player, but he was the reason the shootout with Oklahoma in the Rose Bowl went to overtime with his big plays. If Georgia wins, he'll be a huge reason why.

6. Braun Strowman (Last Poll: 7) - How much time you think Vince McMahon has spent thinking about his Mania match? Two minutes? 90 seconds? Any time at all? God, I hope he punts Kane into the Delaware River at the Rumble.

7. Toni Storm (Last Poll: 8) - I heard she got not only several tiny hats for Christmas, but also tiny helmets, bonnets, and even a tiny purse. I'm ramming this joke into dust, aren't I? I don't care.

8. Turkey Pot Pie (Last Poll: Not Ranked)OFFICIAL HOLZERMAN HUNGERS SPONSORED ENTRY - I've long defended turkey as a holiday protein, but its worth is validated in that any leftover meat can be used to make POT PIE. My wife finally got a hold of the leftover turkey from Christmas (it was frozen) from her mother and made some tonight, and yep, it was worth the wait.

9. John Young (Last Poll: Not Ranked) - The astronaut passed away this past week. He wasn't the first man in space, or on the moon, but he was the first man to sneak a contraband corned beef sandwich into space. I salute him heartily for being a food patriot and the inspiration for the classic Simpsons gag where Homer breaks open the potato chips in zero gravity.

10. Oney Lorcan (Last Poll: 10) - New year, new opportunities for porkin', baby!
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Year End Sorting Bins: YOU'RE THE BEST AROUND

January 9, 2018, 12:10 pm
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Pictured: A fookin' legend
Photo Credit: WWE.com
The second to last bin is comprised of the wrestlers I get excited for. "The Mark Out Gang" is the group of wrestling personalities who really stoke my fires for professional wrestling. I generally go out of my way to see them work, would buy their merchandise, and generally want them to be featured on their shows. Hell, I may even get mad if they don't win their matches. Again, I have a lot of wrestlers on this list, so I have blurbs for a handful and the rest are just listed below, ENJOY:

Sheamus - Rumors are flying around that Sheamus is battling spinal stenosis. For those who don't know, it's the condition that caused Edge to retire. It would be both a crushing end but the most appropriate one for the least appreciated modern WWE main event guy, perhaps ever. He finally found a niche where he's not only surviving, but thriving and fate had to do it to him like Vince McMahon and the writers have done to him all these years ever since he came up from WWECW like a bat out of the otherworld. It's cliche to say guys deserve or don't deserve things that happen to them throughout their careers, but Sheamus has always been a dude that worked hard and tried to stand out. His repayment for years of excellent work and striving to find a niche among a class of wrestlers that were either too bland and unambitious to try and find theirs or a group of guys who were made because they stood out "elsewhere" was constant shitting on from the crowd. It's like, McMahon talked and still talks about the fucking brass ring like it actually does exist, and people like to say Daniel Bryan or Sheamus' tag partner Cesaro tried grabbing it without notice, but fucking look at Sheamus. You say he was "given" opportunities like all you need to do to survive in the main event is be pushed there. I mean, the creative team plopped him in big spots with no help in the most backlash-able positions, and even though he still gave more of an effort in a random night during any point in his career than Randy Orton has in his entire life, it didn't work. Sheamus had the brass ring put in front of him, and every time he tried to grab it, McMahon yanked it away from him and laughed. Fuck that. Sheamus is a goddamn legend, and even though the only time before now where he was anywhere close to his potential that he had in him was the beginning of the Hall of Pain, I never stopped appreciating him as such.

Filthy Tom Lawlor - Wrestling needs comedy, even if you're an edgy ex-MMA dude, especially if you're one of those guys. Lawlor doesn't really go full Kikutaro, and honestly, few people should. But he proves that you can wrestle with condom and diaper ads on your shorts and still be taken seriously between the bells.

The Iconic Duo - Whenever an act I like heads from NXT to the main roster, I get a bit skittish for reasons. The Iconic Duo wasn't great just because they worked great matches (Billie Kay is... eeennnnnhhh in the ring anyway) or they did canned promos with life. The interplay between each other and with Master Regal is one thing, but man, those backstage hand-cams at the Performance Center which either led into a simple match on NXT television or were accidental segues into bigger angles? They were goddamn brilliant and made them as much a part of the NXT continuum as anyone regardless of how else people got their characters over. I love when someone takes something different and excels at it.

Aiden English - Imagine you're Aiden English, stuck in a tag team with a fuckass who wants to fight everyone backstage and with a gimmick that can only be described as "made more for Chikara." That aforementioned fuckass gets released, and now you're biting your nails because you're probably next. No one in creative wants to deal with the dude who sings like an olde-tyme dude, no matter how goddamn talented he is overall. So what happens? Oh you only get paired with Rusev and the two of you turn a nothing, throwaway gimmick segment into the most grassroots-popular thing on your show. That shit is amazing and couldn't have happened to a better dude who needed it more.

Elias - I love Elias, but not like an obtuse douchebag who thinks no heels in WWE do anything wrong and now want to root for them to make statements. I think Elias is another guy who took kind of a nothing gimmick and turned it into gold. But when I'm in the moment, after he's done singing and clowning the crowd, I want to see him get his ass beaten by whomever he's wrestling, granted it's not like Randy Orton or some shit. I like when the bad guy makes me want to see him get vanquished in a heroic battle. It's why I love Darth Vader, not because I want to festoon myself in Empire colors and pretend fascism is cool or whatever. I love him because he's so formidable and his defeat will be satisfying. It's a high compliment for fictional characters.

Bianca Belair - She's wrestled like what, a dozen matches so far, and she's already good? That's crazy. I love uniqueness, and she's great not because she can work a formula match in an excellent manner, but because she's found a different path and is doing it with electricity. I hope she whips her hair back and forth for a long, long time.

Kota Ibushi - I hope he never signs with WWE and that his Ibushi Wrestling Institute raises enough money so he can wrestle Kenny Omega on the moon one day.

Kassius Ohno - I'll admit that I don't always get Ohno in the ring. Sometimes he works a style that is a bit too, I don't know how to describe it except soaked in the backsplash from UWFi or even early UFC (and that's probably a really fucking bad analogy, so I apologize in advance), and it loses me. But when he hits that sweet spot, no one in wrestling has a higher ceiling. He's not always my favorite guy to watch, but I have few people in wrestling I respect more just for the amount of care he puts into it, the time he's spent curating it. If wrestling were The Force, Kassius Ohno would be its Anakin Skywalker, at least before he turned all evil and shit.

The Young Bucks - I can't believe people don't see that the Bucks act perverse and combative because those same people keep jabbing them with the same tired complaints over and over again. They're fucking smartasses, and they love sticking it back to those who not only don't get them, but whine and complain that because they don't get them that they should retire.

Maria Kanellis - That look in her eyes when she did her big speech during her entrance with Mike was everything. She got so into that character, and whether it stopped because Mike went into rehab, she got pregnant, or creative had nothing for them, it's a damn, damn shame.

Akira Tozawa - It's a testament that even now, Tozawa keeps getting crowds to loudly go AH AH AH with him even as 205 Live drifts further and further into a wasteland in WWE importance. He's so good. He's always been so good. I want to see him with the big boys.

Dick Togo - Zack Sabre, Jr. is considered the leftist wrestler's wrestler, but I could never see him riding into battle on horseback leading a leftist coup in a random nation around the globe. I'm personally shocked Togo hasn't done so already. Someday, he'll be a head of state, and he'll have won his revolution with a diving senton off a Che Guevara statue.

Alexander Wolfe - Honestly, this dude won me over with how goddamn crazy he was over the last year. I'm not just talking "wild-eyed, acting all buggy like WWE thinks crazy people are" crazy, like I mean aiming to get the Ziggler Scale renamed in his honor crazy. SANitY is one of many things NXT got right, but it's amazing how right the group has been, not only in wrestling or angles, but in tone and body language. Wolfe is a HUGE part of that.

Timothy Thatcher - I hate that the name "Trashy Tim" is so catchy, because Thatcher is legitimately the opposite of trashy. If all you knew him by was that EVOLVE title reign, which not coincidentally picked up as soon as Stokely Hathaway became his manager and things started happening around them, then you're missing out. He doesn't wrestle bad matches, and he's just got the right aesthetic for a company, any company really, that wants edgy, human-type characters.

Lars Sullivan - You say "Lars Sullivan looks like they gave a baby three overdoses of HGH an hour every hour for 20 years and looks weird," and I say "that's not a negative." The dude totally translates his look into a style that is completely and totally pro wrestling. Like, if you asked me what his gimmick was just by looking at him, I'd say it was "roid rage," and not only is it "roid rage," he's fucking perfect at it.

Juice Robinson - I will be the first to admit I pretty much wrote him off even though I thought he was promising in NXT in his gimmick, but he went to New Japan and transformed. Now he's probably the best non-Kenny Omega gaijin the company has, and it's totally different. His main role is so simple, heroic underdog, but he provides so many layers through his post-match pressers or even the way he throws that palm.

Cedric Alexander - Again, Alexander would be so much better with the big boys, him and Tozawa and Gran Metalik, but you can see he's still bursting through the seams, making every minute between the purple ropes try to matter.

Satoshi Kojima - I wish to be as pure as the man who only roams the earth in search of friends to eat bread with.

Mustafa Ali - It's rare to find someone in entertainment or sports who's a solid dude, but Ali continues to walk the walk all the time. It's easy to root for him because he at least shows he cares about people in real life, and then you realize he's actually really goddamn good at wrestling too, and you wonder why WWE isn't putting him at the vanguard. Then you realize the reason why, and well, he's far too better for WWE or really any wrestling promotion on earth outside of maybe his first homebase of Freelance.

Bryce Remsburg - BRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYCE has always been a solid dude to me, but again, I gotta thank him for letting me get up in front of a live camera and basically do a verbal shitpost streaming over Powerbomb TV.

And the Rest: Abbey Laith, ACH, Aerostar, AJ Gray, Alexa Bliss, Alicia Fox, Andrade "Cien" Almas, Angelus Layne, AR Fox, Barretta, Bayley, Becky Lynch, Candice LeRae, Cassandra Miyagi, Catrina, Cesaro, Chad Gable, Chris Jericho, Chuck Taylor, Corey Graves, Dakota Kai, Dalton Castle, Daniel Bryan, Danny Burch/Martin Stone, Darby Allin, Dario Cueto, Dasher Hatfield, DeSean Pratt, Drago, Dragon Lee, EVIL, Fire Ant, Frightmare, Gran Metalik, Heath Slater, Hiromu Takahashi, Jay Freddie, Jazzy Gabert, Jeff Cobb, John Silver, Johnny Gargano, Johnny Mundo, Jonathan Gresham, Jordynne Grace, Jushin Thunder Liger, Kairi Sane, Keith Lee, Kenny Omega, Killian Dain, Mark Andrews, Mark Henry, Maryse, Meiko Satomura, Mercedes Martinez, Mia Yim, MJF, New Day, Nick Gage, Nicole Matthews, Oney Lorcan, Orange Cassidy, Renee Young, Rey Fenix, Rhyno, Ricochet, Rocky Romero, Ruby Riott, Sami Zayn, Samoa Joe, Sarah Logan, Sasha Banks, Sonya Deville, Taya Valkyrie, Tenille Dashwood, Tetsuya Naito, The Ascension, THE BOYS, The Miz, The Revival, The Ugly Ducklings, Tim Donst, Tommaso Ciampa, Toni Storm, Tucker Knight, Tye Dillinger, UltraMantis Black, Velveteen Dream, War Machine, Willie Mack, Xia Li, Xyberhawx 2000, Zack Ryder, Zack Sabre, Jr.
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Your Midweek Links: A Kingdom of Wrestling

January 10, 2018, 9:00 am
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Okada in them long boys like he was at WrestleKingdom
Photo via @Tanner1495
Okay, so you're still digging out of the winter weather everyone's been experiencing over the country in the last week. That's okay! Nature will help you out over the next few days. Still, you're probably back at work, behind on work from when you were out because of the weather. Don't forget to engage in some self-care and read some of the best stuff on the web. Links! I have them and you're going to want them. Read away.

The TWB 100 is underway. Make sure you cast your ballot before the deadline on Wednesday of next week! [The Wrestling Blog]

Also, make sure you peep in on the YEAR END BLOWOUT, which is still going on for some reason (that reason, I took a bunch of time off at the end of the year for my own sanity). [The Wrestling Blog]

WrestleKingdom 12 took place last Thursday. Ian Williams watched and noted that it indeed was a variety show for all kinds of fans of the thing everyone loves. [VICE Sports]

Who are the top ten wrestlers of 2017? John Corrigan has an idea and wrote his list here. [The Wrestling Estate]

The past year was also a breeding ground for surprises. Kyle Kensing lists his favorite ones. [The Open Man]

Nick Piccone has a superstar WWE should be riding into WrestleMania and beyond. Hint, it's the MONSTER AMONG MEN. [Medium]

NON-WRESTLING #1: Elle Collins completes their dream casting of the original Star Wars trilogy by taking a crack at characters introduced in Episodes V and VI. [SyFy Wire]

NON-WRESTLING #2: Do you like college football? Chances are you love the game on the field and hate the bowl structure and playoff selection process. Rovitz gives your voice amplification. [HOT SPROTS TAKES]
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Pro Wrestling SKOOPZ on The Wrestling Blog: Vol. 4, Issue 2

January 10, 2018, 11:00 am
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BREAKING: THEM LONG BOYS
Photo via Voices of Wrestling
So, are you cretins and dopes NOT HUNGOVER ANYMORE? Well, HORB FLERBMINBER still has a hangover, A HANGOVER FROM REPORTING ALL THE NEWS. That's right, your buddy HORB is back to dispense all the news he spent the last week gleaning, gathering, UPROOTING FROM THE EARTH LIKE A PIG SNIFFING OUT TRUFFLES. Unlike most James Beard Award winning restaurants, I WON'T CHARGE YOU AN ARM AND A LEG TO SHAVE MY NEWS NUGGETS OVER YOUR DOLPHIN RISOTTO.

Now, you could just be content taking in the newsletter, but what kind of MONSTER would you be if you ONLY consumed what's below? Huh? HUH? YOU'D HURT MY FEELINGS! You can help sate my massive and fragile ego by subscribing to the up-to-the-moment content on my Twitter feed, @HorbFlerbminber, first and foremost. You can see when I drop the MOST CURRENT updates, including when CM Punk has eaten corn, and any updates on AJ Lee's menstrual cycle, thanks to the camera I've rigged in their toilet.

You can also get back issues of the newsletter, but why would anyone want those? Fuck, imagine not only caring about what I wrote about several years ago, but caring about it enough to have a four-plus hour podcast on it. You'd have to be sociopathic. I mean... wait, Meltzer makes HOW MUCH OFF HIS BACK ISSUES? Shit, I mean, uh, BUY THEM ALL!

And now, the news!

- WrestleKingdom 12 was last Thursday, and the biggest news coming out of it is that Lil' Kazu got them long boys.

- STAR RATINGS FOR WRESTLEKINGDOM: All matches received 69 stars, except for the main event of Kazuchika Okada vs. Tetsuya Naito, which I gave my elusive 420 star rating.

- New Year's Dash was the next night, and the big news coming out of that event was Lil' Kazu kept wearin' them there long boys, he did.

- Jay White has joined CHAOS over the Bullet Club, stating his intentions were due to the fact that CHAOS would nurture his ambitions of becoming a full-fledged "knife pervert" better.

- Erroneous reports came out that the 25th Anniversary RAW would air for five hours. In reality, the show will air for ａｌｌ ｅｔｅｒｎｉｔｙ.

- Special guests for the show will include Eric Bischoff, Jim Cornette, Raven, Buff Bagwell, Bret Hart, Jeff Jarrett, Dixie Carter, Ted Turner, and Steve Austin. They will all be lowered into a vat of acid as Vince McMahon's long-game revenge for ever having crossed him.

- Samoa Joe suffered an injury Monday night on RAW. He says he heard something pop in his foot when a masked assailant dropped an anvil on it after learning Joe won the vote to team with Bayley in the Mixed Match Challenge when WWE officials clearly wanted Elias to win it. He'll be out for two-to-four months.

- Joe will also be voice acting in the new Transformers animated series as Cockface, the Decepticon with a penis tatooed on his face. The role was written for him when he was still in TNA.

- ESPN produced an article on how CrossFit changed the way WWE trains. In unrelated news, injuries in WWE are up 572 percent over the last five years.

- Cody Rhodes and the Young Bucks chose September 1 as the date for their ALL IN show. When asked the reason, Rhodes said "My father invented having shows on Labor Day weekend. Kiss the rings, peasant."

- IPW: United Kingdom will feature a WWE Champion vs. an IWGP Champion for the first time nearly a quarter century, as Pete Dunne will take on a puckered asshole.

- Brad Stutts has been let go from CWF Mid-Atlantic. The fact that people know the reasons behind it, including me, and are not reporting it mean that wrestling reporting is FUNDAMENTALLY BROKEN. DO YOU HEAR ME, EVERY OTHER WRITER BUT ME?

- Michael Elgin issued an apology over Twitter for his behavior in the last few months. It read, "I'm sorry and junk. Okay, now will all you assholes forgive me and let me be cool and shit on here again? I'm tired of being ostracized!"

Last week's poll results are in. A whopping 98 percent of you thought WrestleKingdom 12 was the greatest show in the history of mankind, while two percent ratted themselves out and will now be sent to the salt mines to harvest the finest seasoning for this year's New Japan Cup Winner's Banquet. This week's poll:
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Twitter Request Line, Vol. 219

January 11, 2018, 12:45 pm
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Their road to Mania should start at the beginning of the Royal Rumble
Photo Credit: WWE.com
It's Twitter Request Line time, everyone! I take to Twitter to get questions about issues in wrestling, past and present, and answer them on here because 140 characters can't restrain me, fool! If you don't know already, follow me @tholzerman, and wait for the call on Wednesday to ask your questions. Hash-tag your questions #TweetBag, and look for the bag to drop Thursday afternoon (most of the time). Without further ado, here are your questions and my answers:

MEN'S: One and two should be Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens, fresh off their unsuccessful attempt at winning the WWE Championship in a joint effort from AJ Styles. It should kickstart their WrestleMania program. Number 30 should be John Cena, just because you want to give the live crowd as loud a groan as possible to send them off and lift their spirits with the eventual winner, provided said winner isn't Roman Reigns.

WOMEN'S: The first two wrestlers to enter the women's Royal Rumble should be Alundra Blayze and Bull Nakano, as a statement that this women's "revolution" was started a long time ago, and that somewhere along the way, it was lost in favor or something more tawdry and less kind to women. They should get the chance to remind everyone that before WWE decided bodypaint handprint bikinis and HLA were the rule of the day, it was kinda serious about women's wrestling, and that the current revolution wasn't a beginning, but a resumption. Number 30 should be Nia Jax, a decidedly HOLY SHIT moment for anyone left in the ring who has been battling and battling and battling to have the largest, meanest, and now freshest competitor in the match be someone who's a goddamn wrecking ball.

The truth is that WWE really has to try to fuck up a Rumble match. The last time it was held in Philly, it tried and succeeded at fucking it up royally, but, I mean, it's not hard. Basically, the Rumble is dinner at a tapas restaurant. Everyone comes in, does a sampling of their shtick, a few guys do heavy lifting (ironman, Kane push, etc.), and it allows for easy big pops for surprise entries. WWE tried being bold with the Rumble when it put 40 wrestlers in, and it was one of the better ones it ever did. Deviation is not the problem. Direction is. So yes, it's more than reasonable to expect the company to put on two good Rumble matches, but at the same time, it's also reasonable to wonder which direction will show up, the one from, say, 2011, or the one from 2015?

The product is irrelevant. Big E would hands down be both the best and funniest wrestling spokesperson. Imagine him hawking fast food, cars, or even, ahem, family planning products. Don't tell me that you'd consider abandoning your leftist, anticommercialist principles just for one second because Big E was hilariously trying to sell you products.

Alundra Blayze and Bull Nakano are first for reasons I laid out in the first question. Next, Peyton Royce and Billie Kay are in from NXT, because they need to be out of NXT. Next, if you're talking returns and surprises, I want Eve Torres, because she was tremendous right before she left, and I could use another sampling of what she has to offer. Finally, just for randomness' sake, how about one of the Mae Young Classic competitors, like, I don't know, Rhea Ripley? I think she might do well in a Rumble setting.

Protected user @adamsgroove asks:
What do you want to happen at (either) the Royal Rumble or WrestleMania, and what don't you want to happen at the same event?
I want Brock Lesnar to lose the WWE Championship at the Royal Rumble, and not have to lose it again at WrestleMania. Let him drop the title to Braun Strowman so that he can be freed up to do whatever it is the WWE wants him to do and give me the Strowman/Roman Reigns WrestleMania main event that should have been written in ink the night after last year's Mania.

Very carefully.

No, seriously, it's not as daunting as some of y'all are making it out to be. The bare minimum you have to do is think about all the wrestling you enjoyed last year, have some sort of idea of whose performances in those matches impressed you or that you enjoyed or that you thought were the best, and then rank those individual performers in order. All you need to do is rank 25 to have a ballot, but if you go up to 100, I won't hate it either. No sweat.

It's Lars Sullivan. Remember, Braun Strowman didn't just come out of nowhere in 2017 as much as he started showing his true monster potential in 2016. Remember, that's when the Sami Zayn feud happened, but even before then, he was doing the entertaining squash thing before that. Sullivan has that end of year thing going for him and he's coming hot into 2018 with a notable run of matches to close out the calendar. Now he's looking to find his own Big Show or Roman Reigns in Killian Dain, and I personally cannot wait to see if my optimism for him is going to pay off like I think it is.
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The Failed State of Wrestling Journalism

January 12, 2018, 6:45 am
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Pictured: A failed journalist
Photo via @Observerinthe90s
Journalism in pro wrestling has never had a high reputation. While its model of anonymous source reporting is unfairly maligned, as it is the basis of all journalism, the subjects of reporting, read, promoters and bookers, have unprecedented power to change plan on whims, discrediting reports and reporters. In an industry not helmed by legit crazy people, this would not be a problem, but when the most notable promoter is less a human and more a caricature of a paranoid robber baron, it sets a poor example for the industry. Accuracy in reporting in an industry such as this can be forgiven because of this atmosphere, even if many journalists in this field never really figured out how to adapt to the landscape.

However, the function of a healthy fourth estate is dual in nature. It reports the news and it speaks truth to power, acting as an adversarial entity towards the influential and lucrative entities for the benefit of those who feel the adverse effects of said power. Sometimes, this relationship puts the media on the side of the wrestlers against bookers. Sometimes, it's called to protect powerless wrestlers, fans, or bystanders from workers. No matter what the circumstances are, the media should always look to provide truth on behalf of the oppressed to the public at large. Otherwise, it's just a propaganda arm.

In this arena, wrestling journalism has undergone a complete and abhorrent failure in its duty lately. Two prominent journalists, Dave Meltzer and Bruce Mitchell, showed they were more concerned with protecting "the boys" rather than standing up for victims of malfeasance, in this case sexual in nature. Their recent attempts at painting news that either disregarded or even attempted to discredit victims shows that as situated, wrestling journalism is a broken entity that serves no use.

Meltzer's actions are the most egregious, because he's actively involved in the smear campaign against a rape victim/accuser. The Sean Orleans sexual assault which involved Michael Elgin acting as a two-faced cretin, saying the right things in public but doing his part to harass and silence the victim in private, has continued to be at the forefront of the indie wrestling scene, mainly because Elgin keeps making ham-handed "apologies" and the victim continues to be on the butt-end of a harassment campaign. Not only did Meltzer brush the story under the rug, his coverage on his site and newsletter was sympathetic to Elgin despite every piece of evidence coming out that showed him as guiltier and guiltier with each passing day.

The final straw came when Meltzer linked a burner Tumblr account set up by an anonymous figure close to the situation that reprinted screenshots of the victim interacting with various people within the wrestling community in an attempt to paint her in an unflattering light on his message board as a piece of evidence to defend Elgin in all this. In doing so, Meltzer went from irresponsible journalist to active participant in the cover-up of the incident and discrediting of the victim in a sexual assault case. In this case, Meltzer showed he's not only a bad champion of the downtrodden, but that he's also a terrible reporter.

It's not the first time Meltzer has failed to stand up for the oppressed and marginalized. Remember when his reaction to Tomoaki Honma's domestic violence accusations was to claim the victim was making it up out of jealousy of a work angle where Honma got to be romantically linked to a comely young lass? Or when his reaction to Darren Young coming out of the closet, the first wrestler in a major company to do so while active, was that it was a "non-story?" Or when he compared the usage of the word "mark" in the wrestling industry to that of "the n-word?" Hint here, Meltzer, when you can't spell one of the words out, that's the worse one. Meltzer is not a reporter, he's a propagandist, and a transparent one as well.

Mitchell's transgressions seem less egregious on the surface. He released a report detailing Brad Stutts' release from CWF Mid-Atlantic that was actually full of legitimate reporting, shedding light on a situation whose details few people were privy to. However, reporting is nothing when the bias is placed towards rehabilitating the transgressor and not towards presenting the truth and doing right by the victims. The only thing the piece was missing was a gif of Mitchell at the bottom in a cheerleader outfit doing a routine in support of Stutts' eventual redemption tour. The piece described Stutts bringing a convicted recidivist felon into the CWF locker room and running a prostitution ring, which Stutts tried to recruit someone in the locker room to, as "Brad being Brad." It's the same kind of attitudes of toxic dismissal towards men that Warren Zevon skewered in the title track to his 1978 album, Excitable Boy:
He took little Suzie to the Junior Prom
Excitable boy, they all said
And he raped her and killed her, then he took her home
Excitable boy, they all said
Well, he's just an excitable boy
The song's protagonist certainly was not "just" an excitable boy, he was a psychopath. Stutts isn't an "excitable boy" either. He's obviously a predator who needs to be separated from the CWF locker room at best and probably thrown in a prison cell and rehabilitated at worst. Again, to paint him as such is to further attack the marginalized people that Stutts preyed upon. It's a systemic failure of the purpose of journalism wrapped up in a neat bow and praised because Mitchell did "REPORTING!" to back up his puff piece.

As a whole, professional wrestling's journalistic arm has shown to have withered and died. If it cannot stand up for people as theoretically as easy to stand up for as sexual assault victims, it is a useless entity. One could argue that pro wrestling journalism is "just as bad" as the regular media in this regard, but someone has to make the change. Someone should start standing up for the little guy, especially when it comes to sexual assault. Maybe instead of trying to cozy up to THE BOYS and be a part of their locker rooms, they should be holding them accountable for the gross, predatory bullshit they seem to think is part of the business, and instead of toadying to management when it comes to labor relations, stand with the wrestlers then. Then again, maybe having a wrestling move named after you is better than doing your actual fucking job. 
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NXT In 60 Seconds

January 15, 2018, 8:30 am
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Yeah yeah yeah, it's the year to be (mostly) hated
Photo Credit: WWE.com
Some Guy, BAY BAY: Welcome to 2018 — the year of the Undisputed Era.
Robert Pescador, Esq.: Of course, we started early by gathering these shiny World Tag Title belts at the tail end of last year, thus making us the baddest team on the planet.
Kyle O'Reilly, MMA Enthusiast: Not bad meaning bad, but bad meaning good.
RPE: There it is.
KOR ❤ MMA: This — tonight — is the night to end SAnitY.
Adam Cole: And on any night, any one who stands betwixt me and becoming the next NXT World Champion will be destroyed.  smiles  Enjoy the show.

Shayna Baszler, On Last Week's "Ghost In 60 Seconds": teaches some submissions by choking out an NPC
Dakota Kai: points to the sky
Baszler: stares blankly Is...is that where the hospital I'm about to send you to is?  joint manipulations, stomps on and "breaks" Not Evie's elbow
Center Stagers: BOO!
Referee: GAH.  I mean, uhhh.... winner!  alsolet'sgetthemedicsouthere
Announce Watching The Replays: GAH!
Shayna: laughs and chokes Kai out with the rear naked choke
Ember Moon: comes out for the save, talks smack
Shayna: talks smack back but leaves of her own volition
Master Regal, A Few Moments Later: I've been around 35 years; whatever games you're playing, I see right through them.  And it won't get you a title shot.
Shayna: scoffing Are we done here?  walks off

Authors of Pain: We're the most brutal force in NXT!  Lots of yelling in presumably Samoan!
Paul Ellering: Whoever wins tonight's main event will know the Pyrrhic meaning of the term.  It does not matter when or where — we want our titles.

Kassius Ohno: proffers the heroic Code of Honor handshake to start
Raul Mendoza: shakes it back in kind  Hey, I was thinking...
KO1.0: No.
Raul: But but but but look!  I'm fast!  Springboard corkscrew armdrag!  Springboard roundhouse!
K.O.1.0: Again — Electric Chair Stun Gun, kick in the face, Northern Forearm — no.
Referee: Winner!


Zelina Vega: Now more than ever, The Champ and I are on the same page.  He will leave Philadelphia The Champ.  Johnny got lucky; he's just an opportunist who took advantage of the right man at the right time.  Hell, we've already beaten him twice.  Johnny Wrestling is a lie, and Andrade "Cien" Almas is reality.
Faceless Media Drone: So what would it take to beat him a third time?
Zelina: Bitch, tape is rolling!  I ain't giving away my championship garnering managerial secrets!  I assure you Cien is ready, Johnny isn't worth the sweat off our back, and there's no running from The Champ.

Christy St. Cloud: I'm here with our new number contender--
Johnathon Grapples: A lot of people thought I didn't have a chance is suddenly distracted — no, not by HIM
Velveteen Dream: Say it.  Not my name.  But thank you.
Johnny Gargano: Why?
VD: Because you got lucky.  You beat Ohno, who doesn't look like a superstar -- I could've done in 30 seconds what it took you 20 minutes to do -- and you got lucky pinning Black.  You won't win in Philadelphia, and you know you didn't earn your spot.  I deserve it.  You know it, too.  walks off
JG: looks pensive

Street Profits: dap up some NPCs in the back Regal's office.  Gotta come correct.  straighten themselves up and enter
Master Regal: Gentlemen, welcome.  What's the nature of your inquiry?
Street Profits: We're just sayin', we want to bring the gold to the streets and we are undefeated.  So when's our turn at bat?
Master Regal: You gentlemen are undefeated, so I offer you this -- a number one contenders' match next week...against the Authors of Pain.
Street Profits: are psyched  That's that swag we been talkin''bout, man!
William Regal: dances a bit as is his occasional wont
Street Profits: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA that's that sh---that's that good good right there!  We won't let you down, boss.  We won't.  leave happily

Lio Rush: appears
Center Stagers: are excited Who's he going to face?  music starts ...oh, he ded.
Lars Sullivan: You people can't even spell dead right.  Abominable.
Lio: ducks, dips, dives
Lars: You failed to dodge.  LARIAT.  Freak Accident
Referee: Winner!
Lars: I have faced a multitude of opposition, including a series of handicap matches.  All have fallen by my hands.  I think about this force I never felt before a few weeks ago, but I think about it more now since I deign to destroy it.  This it is a him, in actuality, and I wish to eradicate YOU,..Killian Dain.
Center Stagers: ohhhhhh
Certain Overlords Of This Website: ...this is the dictionary definition of my shit.
Lars: pulls up Lio and hits him with an Avalanche Freak Accident
Center Stagers: jesus h vishnu
Lio: I feel like Ron Howard's been doing the voiceover on my nXt career.   

the Undisputed Era: jump SAnitY in the back, laugh about leaving them laying, then come out to explain the plot for the live audience... but first, obviously
Some Guy/Some Center Stagers: ADAM COLE, BAY BAY! 
Somehow Not ReDragon: Something's missing... oh, right!  It's our opponents!
Bob Vigoda: Perhaps they forgot!
Adam Cole: Or perhaps we kicked the crap out of them in the back.
All Of Them: It's the second one.  The thing Adam/I just said.  It was fun, too.
Nikki Cross: comes out on the ramp ranting and raving, must be restrained by several referees
the Era: is highly amused
Center Stagers: Nikki Cross!  Nikki Cross!
the Era: Now, before we were so rudely interrupted — Blackpool Death March begins
Master Regal: Unlike my dance skills, this is the bad kind of ridiculous.  You WILL be defending your titles tonight...
Roderick Strong: Sounds like fun.  I'm in.
the Era: Hey, wait a minute, this isn't right--
Incendiary: No man is ever truly good!  No man is ever truly E VIL!
Aleister Black: I don't know about fun.  But I know I'm in.
Strong Black: hit the ring and whale on the champs, quickly clearing the ring after their arrival via their offense 
Black: controls Act I until Fish chop blocks him and sends him into the apron as a result
Center Stagers: BOO!
Not ReDragon, Dammit: quick tags, each man landing escalating blows until Fish Explodes Black, who might've opened for Incendiary once
Strong: makes the save
Black: lands a big knee on Fish as a means of reset button
Tags: made
Roddy: beats on them both, suplexes Fish onto O'Reilly, then lands a leaping knee on Kyle
Black: kicks Fish on the outside
Adam: gets involved on his friends' behalves
Black: glares at him
Adam: regrets everything and flees through the crowd
ReDragon: Would you look at that.  Totally Eliminate Strong
Referee: Winners!

Black: wait what
Adam: wait what laughs widely 
Black: heads back to the ring
Adam: waits until after NRD get laid out then sends Black into the post You can't beat us!
NRD: Totally Eliminate Black
Adam: oshigoroshis him onto a chair, stands on Black's chest as seen There will be no comeuppance!  You hear me?!  NO...
Blackpool Death March: starts up again
Master Regal: (irate) Philadelphia has an extreme history; as such, your match against Aleister is Extreme Rules.
Center Stagers: love that shit
Adam: gets in William's face
William: remains unmoved and irate
Center Stagers: NXT!  NXT!  NXT!  NXT!
Adam: holds his glare a few beats longer before leaving with his associates, all of whom talk smack on their way out of the episode 
↧

Year End Sorting Bins: The Creme de la Creme

January 15, 2018, 1:20 pm
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Two of my super-faves going at it on NXT
Photo Credit: WWE.com
The end of the sorting bin extravaganza is nigh. This is the final category, the top of the pops, the wrestlers for whom I come closest to obsession. All of them get write-ups because they're the aces, man. The greatest. The finest. At least for this year. Sentence fragment.

Nikki Cross - SANitY is an incredible stable. Eric Young is a fine leader because the dude has them crazy eyes. Alexander Wolfe doesn't care about his own health or welfare. Killian Dain is exactly what one might think of if Godzilla took a human form. But the whole thing would just be another group of guys in the white noise if not for Nikki Cross. She brings that entire group together and elevates it. She's so kinetic and vibrant that it feels like if you took her away from not just SANitY, but NXT, the entire operation loses something. Whether it's the way she sensually gazes at Ruby Riotttttttttt, Tazmanian Devils her way down to ringside to fight anyone or anything that gets in the group's way, or the utter lack of fear she has taking down any competitor, whether it be Asuka or Adam Cole or anyone on the roster, she's a genuinely refreshing presence not just in NXT, but in WWE. No one is like her. I'm certain no one will ever be allowed to be like her, and that's for the best, because no one can pull off what she pulls off every week she's on camera.

Fred Yehi - In 2016, the rest of the country found out what I already knew about Fred Yehi, or at least it just watched him turn in match after match of crazy, fun, sublime grappling on WWN Live. Last year is when he finally started getting calls from them companies around the country. All this should have been happening for the last five years, but better late than never. Anyone not booking this man should be in BIG TROUBLE.

Breezango - The Fashion Files were the most delightful thing on the trashhole of Tuesday nights known as Smackdown this year. I'm not sure how it was on the same two hour telecast as Jinder Mahal: The Real Racist and this limp Sami Zayn/Kevin Owens team-up. All of it has to do with Tyler Breeze and Fandango (and yeah, Konor and Viktor too). The material has been hit or miss, but every single vignette was must-see because of those two and their delivery. Sure, they didn't wrestle a whole lot, but in the Vince McMahon "WRESTLING, ERRR, I MEAN ENTERTAINMENT IS A VARIETY SHOW, FUCK YOU" era, you need guys like Breezango providing comic relief in esoteric ways. Because wrestling is the most esoteric of the combat arts, you see.

Otis Dozovic - Why just Dozovic and not both guys from Heavy Machinery? It's complicated. Tucker Knight is good, don't get me wrong, but it feels like he's already reached his ceiling. Plus, he reminds me of Mac's dad from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and I never really liked Mac's dad. He gave me the creeps. Anyway, Dozovic isn't just a big beefy boy who likes to get rowdy, but he's got them frantic faces. He looks like he wants to get out there and bat around his opponents like he's the dog and they're the Kong full of dang peanut butter. I want nothing but good things for Otis Dozovic, my beautiful bowling ball wrestler of a son.

Asuka - People who think Asuka isn't any good really underestimate both her matches with Ember Moon, Nikki Cross, and friends, but also, how satisfying watching someone kick another person's ass with little to no resistance. I mean, have you seen how goddamn gorgeous her roundhouse kick to the head is? No one is ready for Asuka, but I'm always ready to watch her cave some poor schmuck's head in, that's for sure.

Stokely Hathaway - When Big Stoke shows up to an indie show, you know big stuff is gonna go down. He's guaranteed to put a smile on people's faces, even if most of the time that smile comes from whatever local babyface is chasing him around the ring and threatening him with his life. The art of management is not lost as long as Hathaway is around.

Charly Caruso - Contrary to popular belief, this is not totally a thirst placement. Sure, Caruso is perhaps the most traditionally stylish person in wrestling history, but she's actually super good at her job of asking questions backstage without seeming like she was programmed to ask them by some kind of artificial intelligence. I mean have you seen some of the talking ficus plants WWE has hired over the years? Caruso has been Renee Young levels of good at her job since she started.

Braun Strowman - BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN.

Tomohiro Ishii - Kazuchika Okada gets all the pub for being the ace, and Kenny Omega is the trendy favorite, and Tetsuya Naito is the main event nerd pick. I like all three of them. But none of them are Tomohiro Ishii, who looks like he was carved out of a pillar of granite just to look angry and headbutt people. Again, it's eminently satisfying to watch someone big and strong and mean just beat the Christ out of people and not look like he or she is a step away from looking at home in a Rankin-Bass Christmas special. Although honestly, if they ever did a live-action Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, I would pay good money to watch it several times in the theater if they cast Ishii as the Bumble.

Drew Gulak - I was all sad for my fellow Philadelphian because he got signed to WWE and taken away from the indie circuit just to do enhancement talent shit for TJ Perkins or whatever. Then, they just let him redo his Drew Gulak for a Better Combat Zone on 205 Live, and he became the best thing in WWE by far the entire year. Funny how letting cool dudes do their thing just happens to produce great television, right?

Officer Magnum - WHO'S A GOOD PRO WRESTLER? HUH? GOOD WRESTLER! GOOD DOG!
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