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The Wrestling Blog's OFFICIAL Best in the World Rankings for March 19, 2018

March 19, 2018, 4:00 pm
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DuVernay did well with A Wrinkle in Time
Photo Credit: Joe Pugliese
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. Ava DuVernay (Last Week: 3) - I actually saw A Wrinkle in Time on Friday with my son, who wanted to see it, and it was actually really good. I had my problems with it (glossed over some things a bit too fast, didn't really dig Levi Miller's or Mindy Kaling's performances), but overall, it was stunning. It was colorful, bright, hopeful, all things that modern blockbusters seem to want to eschew nowadays. DuVernay really should be proud of this film. It's no Selma obviously, but I mean, the movie marketplace has places for well-crafted blockbusters from directors who give a shit about their art as well as the important indie films that speak truth to power. AWIT is definitely safely in the former, and honestly, it should be looked upon as a success no matter what the critical aggregate is or how much money it's made or will make.

2. Mark Henry (Last Week: Not Ranked) - Look, you know that I don't put a whole lot of stock into Vince McMahon's crony-ass Hall of Fame and everything, but it means so much to the performers themselves. Mark Henry is someone who deserves to feel that warmth and acceptance from the crowd, the fans, and his bosses, bosses who more often than not before 2011 put him in racist and demeaning gimmicks that in part may have been meant to get him to break the massively long contract he signed way back when he first started in the company. Henry broke through a lot of those constraints to show signs of growth and entertaining performance, culminating in a run from 2011 through 2013 where he was bar none one of the greatest pro wrestlers in the world. Imagine watching him in 2011 during the Hall of Pain run and not being wowed at what he was doing. Imagine revisiting his retirement swerve and subsequent punking of John Cena right before Money in the Bank 2013 and not getting goosebumps. Henry was parked on this list in a prior incarnation for a reason, and you're damn right he should be honored with the best in the business' history, regardless of how much stock the hall around him holds.

3. Braun Strowman (Last Week: 1) - Honestly, I hope he wins the Tag Team Championships by himself just so he can yell at both Kane and Daniel Bryan that "I AM THE TAG TEAM CHAMPIONS." Not that I have any lingering hatred for Bryan, but it would just be funny and awesome at the same time.

4. Asuka (Last Week: 6) - Really, I may have to start making shit up about Asuka to keep her on here if I continue my blackout of Smackdown. It's a shame too, because really, Asuka/Charlotte Flair should be one of those feuds that gets a great build, and instead it's in the hands of the goddamn Road Dogg and his racist sidekick Michael PS Hayes.

5. Joel Embiid (Last Week: 5) - The Sixers are still in striking distance of getting into homecourt advantage for the first round of the playoffs. Of course, the flagging Wizards aren't the only obstacle, but honestly, this year's been a success regardless. They're ahead of schedule if they make it the top four in the conference.

6. The Guy Behind UMBC's Twitter Account (Last Week: Not Ranked) - The University of Maryland-Baltimore County men's basketball team made HISTORY (not WWE making history, but real history) by becoming the first ever team in the men's NCAA Basketball Championship tournament to score the 16th seed over one seed upset when they took out the top ranked seed in the whole thing, Virginia. Honestly though, for as anomalous as the kind of win it was (they won by 20... no one could have seen that coming, even with Virginia's top scorer out), the real star was the man behind the Twitter account, who gained followers and respect for his tweeting Friday night. Sometimes, the little guy does do well.

7. Bacon (Last Week: Not Ranked)OFFICIAL HOLZERMAN HUNGERS SPONSORED ENTRY - I hate how The Chive and MAN INTERNET (Man-ternet?) have oversaturated hype around bacon and thus made it a joke, because it really is a top-flight breakfast meat. I reminded myself of that Sunday morning when I made a pound of double-smoked, thick-sliced bacon for me and the kids for breakfast. Folks, if you can go to a butcher and get the good stuff, do it. Bonus points if you're near some Amish folks and can have them butcher it for you.

8. Kimber Lee (Last Week: 7) - She'll be back in Chikara at the very latest at King of Trios, where she and Los Ice Creams will take up their Challenge of the Immortals winning team to attempt to win the biggest tourney in all of indie wrestling. The Princess who can save herself hopefully will have more than just a few adventures in Chikara-land, because the young fanbase could use someone like her to look up to.

9. Ilja Dragunov (Last Week: Not Ranked) - Please grant me a late-slip on this one, because Westside Xtreme Wrestling's 16 Carat Tournament happened last weekend, not this past one, but Dragunov, the Soviet superstar who thought he had to retire came roaring back and captured the WXW Unified World Championship in his big return to the company. I've never seen him work, but all the people whom I trust are relishing his comeback, and he seems like a really ace dude too, so hey, why not?

10. Oney Lorcan (Last Week: 10) - For the low price of $9.99 a month, you too can be porkin' just like Oney Lorcan!
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An Honest Critique of the Ultimate Deletion

March 20, 2018, 8:20 am
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The Ultimate Deletion was a fun watch, but it had distinct lack of ambition
Photo Credit: WWE.com
Before anyone writes any words about the Ultimate Deletion, one should note that any criticism of it couched in the belief that Vince McMahon had any resistance to air something as esoteric and cinematic as the Broken Universe does not know Vince McMahon's history of broadcasting wrestling. It's wild that the most successful wrestling promoter of all-time seemingly hates the medium of pro wrestling, but stranger things have happened. McMahon has always fancied himself as an entertainment mogul more than a promoter anyway. He's said so on so many occasions. He's taken great pains to keep the word "wrestling" from being uttered on RAW. I mean, nothing makes me cringe harder than when Michael Cole proclaims WrestleMania to be the biggest event in "entertainment." He produced "Fuji Vice," for crying out loud.

I don't think his lack of understanding of the Broken Universe is the issue either. He certainly got it enough, or at least had sense enough to listen to people in his inner circle who did get it enough to attempt his own knock-off with the ill-fated New Day invasion of the Wyatt Compound in 2016. Again, McMahon has done his share of weird, sometimes baffling stories and segments in the history of televised WWE programming. The Broken Universe is a different kind of weird, for sure, but it's not necessarily out of line with the kind of strange that WWE has done, at least in themes and beats. If McMahon didn't get Matt Hardy's current signature character, it wasn't in trappings, but it was in his insistence that it was another piece of meat to be fed into his homogenizing grinder to be made into Monday Night RAW sausage, that Broken Matt would play well with the same production style he uses for Roman Reigns or even Bray Wyatt.

The reason why the Ultimate Deletion worked was because the Broken Matt character was placed back into its comfortable ecosystem, replete with Jeremy Borash in place to direct it. However, the reason why it didn't work nearly as well as it could have came right before the payoff portion was about to start. Cole, in introducing the match, apologized to the viewers for what they were about to see. It wasn't loose, off-the-cuff Cole who is playing off his broadcast partners to jab or converse; it was serious broadcast journalist Cole giving the straight dope from the script, probably with McMahon or Paul Levesque barking in his ear to make sure to be as contrite for what was about to follow. It's not like the match was bloody beyond what the sponsors would allow. It certainly wasn't as violent as even, say, the Elimination Chamber gimmick match. No one went hard R or dropped a racial slur. WWE's own corporate direction was way more problematic in trying to sneak honoring Fabulous Moolah by the people the week before.

No, McMahon had Cole apologize because he just had to air something that he didn't create and thus didn't really have any interest in owning or embracing. On the surface, the apology was creative's way of amping up the edge factor, even if it probably didn't even come as close to skirting boundaries as House of Horrors. However, one didn't have to read too much further into the subtext to see that Broken Matt Hardy's full actualization was something he put on his program for reasons other than wanting to have it be part of his entertainment company's legacy. It was something those mongrel fans wanted, or a thing he had to do to ensure that he and he alone had monopoly on all the interesting characters in his industry. It would be like if Disney finally got their acquisition of 20th Century Fox assets just so it could keep someone else from making money off those assets and then when it had to make, say, another X-Men movie, putting Uwe Boll in charge of it.

Okay, maybe the Boll comparison is rough and unfair because it's not like the principles in the match let their intended audience down. Hardy, Wyatt, Reby Sky, Señor Benjamin, and even the kids were, in a word, wonderful. Hell, it's the first time Wyatt has been entertaining in months, maybe years. He was so natural in that ephemerally eccentric world, and he played off Hardy in ways he couldn't when they were building towards this match on RAW. The match hit all the notes that the first Final Deletion did, but in that way is where the problems with production and direction from above Hardy and Borash came. It felt too much like the Final Deletion in progression and in what beats exactly were utilized.

I don't fault Hardy and Borash for the most part, because they were probably directed from above to recreate the Final Deletion as faithfully as they could, and for good reason. Barely anyone watches TNA anymore, and no matter how many vocal members of the crowd chant DELETE, chances are they may not have ever seen the Final Deletion, or Delete or Decay, or Tag Team Apocalypto. "Delete" may just be a trendy chant for a popular wrestler with buzz among the hardcore fans, so getting down to brass tacks might make sense from the point of view of the auteurs. It's the straightest dope you could possibly provide as an introduction. However, even if the goal was acquainting a new audience to this world, a simple reboot didn't have the ambition that the original Broken Matt character had. It needed something to build upon the original ethos and give it a signature for that one entry into the logbook, for its debut in the WWE Universe.

That part is where McMahon's failings come in. While letting him have creative input on it might have come with disastrous results (or maybe not, since again, he's a fuckin' weird dude who might have fared better inputting on something like the Ultimate Deletion than he has shown to be with actual situations that play off normal human emotions and everyday scenarios), the fact that it felt way too similar to the Final Deletion felt like McMahon didn't have enough of a drive to make it something uniquely WWE. He probably didn't bother to watch the original because he didn't create it. It felt like he just plopped a big rubber stamp on it and then made those feelings known when he had Cole apologize for airing it beforehand, whether or not the apology may have also made narrative sense. It's a shame, because the labor and the direct direction was as good as the Broken bill of goods promised. However, the distinct and palpable lack of ambition in advancing that lore hung in the air like a stale fart. It'd be too easy to blame it all on the performers and on Borash. Besides, isn't it well-known that everything has to filter through McMahon, especially for RAW? Then again, RAW otherwise was still mired in the same sort of shoot bullshit that mainstream wrestling has adopted for over 20 years now. Maybe "good but stagnant" is the ceiling for RAW content nowadays.
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What Is Wrestling? (Psst, It's Art)

March 20, 2018, 12:00 pm
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Wrestling is whatever you want it to be, but that means Jordynne Grace is more right in that it's art
Photo Credit: Scott Finkelstein
Jordynne Grace is known for a lot of things in pro wrestling. She's one half of Team PAWG with LuFisto. She's starting to travel the world to ply her craft. She's also a renowned powerlifter who can probably lift you, yes, you sitting there reading this over her head. She's also got one of the more engaging and entertaining Twitter accounts among wrestlers of any level of employment. Sometimes, she gets into scraps with folks, whether it be fans or colleagues. Her latest spat was more the latter.

Over the weekend, she got into it with people, including Davey Richards and Josh Barnett, arguing over whether wrestling is an art or a sport, respectively. In the near nine-year history of The Wrestling Blog, you should know by now that I lean more towards the art side of the spectrum in this argument with about a Ford F-150's truckload worth of posts explaining why. I say "lean" because in all honesty, wrestling is what one makes it out to be. It's the most malleable artform that has a basic, rigid-seeming structure that I can think of. Movies and television can be anything, but the media lend themselves to infinite possibilities of what stories they can tell. The limit is only the money involved.

Pro wrestling is different in that you have to have a ring and you have to have the presupposition that it's a sporting contest. In reality, if you have those things, you can do pretty much whatever you want (and some might argue you don't even need the ring) and it'll still come across as pro wrestling. Case closed, right? Well, not exactly. You have some folks who like to peek their heads into any debate and insist wrestling HAS to be a certain way, and it HAS to follow some arcane rules in order to be wrestling or else it deserves to have nuclear weapons deployed upon it, isn't that right Jimmy?

Wanting to kill anyone who likes Lucha Underground works up a mean appetite
Photo Credit: Kevin Steen
Anyway, the common theme of those who think wrestling should be done in one specific way is that they think it should be presented as a sport at least, and that it should be considered a sport at most. The thing is, they're not completely wrong. Not just anyone can do pro wrestling. The activity takes a certain amount of dexterity and stamina to do well. You don't have to look like John Cena or LeBron James or even CM Punk to do it, but you should probably be able to chew gum and walk at the same time at the very least. These hard-liners do have some merit in claiming that it's a sport, even with the worked results.

Where folks like Cornette and Richards and Barnett fall off the rails is that many times (especially in the cases of those named in this sentence), their insistence on calling it a sport stifles aspects of wrestling that make it great in the first place. Even in the most shootiest of shoot-style promotions have artistic flair to them in some way in that it's not a shoot fight in the least. It's coordinating movements into something that looks like a stylized — idealized, yes, but still stylized — version of a fight. It's grittier. It looks more realistic. But it is to a shoot fight what, say, Saving Private Ryan is to actual war. In this comparison, Chikara would be something like Ender's Game or Pacific Rim or some other fantastically stylized movie that depicts war.

This vision gets even more muddled when moving onto more mainstream promotions. Yes, New Japan Pro Wrestling has more of a sports trapping than WWE does at this point. For that matter, so does Chikara because you have to accumulate consecutive wins to get title shots, unlike in WWE where title shots seem to be given out in turns or whatever. But I'm digressing. New Japan does feel more like a sport than WWE does, but at the same time, it embraces the character-driven aspect of wrestling, the theatrical aspect so to speak, not just with the characters it embraces, but with how the matches seem to unfold more as long-form cinematic fights rather than something one might see in the Octagon. Even if that kind of match progression lends itself to a sporting commentary, it still causes such a disconnect to hear Barnett talk about wrist control for three-quarters of a match between The Strip Club Money Thrower and Goofball What Uses Too Much Hair Product and Plays Air Guitar Whenever He Can Get It In. Who the fuck wants to hear about technique when the overarching story of the match has to do with more dramatic arcs?

Of course, my definition of "it can be whatever it wants to be" for wrestling does skew it really close to what art is. Even if the inherent structure of it and the athletic trappings might give folks pause in declaring it for certain as art, it feels like Grace is waging battle with more accurate weaponry than the other dorks are. Besides, whom are you going to trust, the cool wrestle lady that every indie promotion in America and elsewhere is looking to book, or the bridge-burning troll who swears he's going to be a paramedic soon and the guy whose professionalism as a commentator ends when someone he doesn't like is wrestling? I know whose side I'm going to.
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Daniel Bryan Is Back

March 21, 2018, 7:00 am
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The Dragon Returns
Photo Credit: WWE.com
On February 8, 2016, Daniel Bryan appeared at RAW in Seattle to announce he would be retiring from active in-ring competition. The announcement left people stunned, but given the injuries that cut both of his afterglow runs after WrestleMania XXX and 31 short, it wasn't surprising. The rash of head and neck injuries he suffered were the product of a career that went hard. However, while Daniel Bryan was retiring, everyone sort of assumed he'd pop up somewhere else after his contract ended to continue wrestling as Bryan Danielson, no matter how many times he said that he'd settle down to a more pastoral life.

The fires never really went out, and Bryan, with the exhortation from his wife Brie Bella, never stopped trying to recover and defy odds to get cleared medically to compete to a level of safety that he was comfortable with. Even if it wasn't going to be in WWE, he was going to wrestle again. News started to filter out that he got clearance from doctors outside of WWE, but the funny thing is that for how fast and loose WWE doctors have played it with other cases in the past and continue to do so, Bryan was a high-profile case. He wasn't going to get clearance so easily from WWE doctors, not with concussion suits ongoing and increased scrutiny on its practices. Basically, Vince McMahon and Dr. Joseph Maroon were covering their asses. Bryan wasn't going to get clearance unless they got the most rock solid evidence that he could go through the rigors of a high-profile pay-per-view match up to the standards he set for himself.

Apparently, WWE administration finally got that evidence. WWE dot com "broke" the story yesterday in advance of Smackdown Live. Bryan kicked the show off with an impassioned soliloquy where he profusely thanked the fans and his wife for always pushing him to keep fighting to get back. And then to close the show, he took a hell of an ass-kicking at the hands of Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens, one that finished with him taking an apron bump off an Owens powerbomb. That's certainly one way to hop back into the swing of things.

The real story here, however, is that Daniel Bryan wasn't "just" cleared yesterday. According to my well-placed source, Bryan has had WWE clearance since January 27 of this year, the day before the Royal Rumble. He has always been earmarked for a match at WrestleMania. It's unclear how WWE was going to announce his return, but I can confirm yesterday's announcement wasn't planned to happen as it did. Apparently, people got too close to sniffing out the news of Bryan's clearance before WWE was ready to announce it in whatever way it was going to do it, so they rolled it out in the "legitimate" news fashion before going with it on the show.

So, this whole deal was in the works for a longer time than what WWE has let on. Bryan's status changed for one of two reasons. The first gives WWE more credit for altruism and wrestler safety than it deserves regardless of whether the treatments Bryan was receiving, including but not limited to hyperbaric isolation therapy worked in miraculous ways. The second is that WWE knew he was going to wrestle if he left the company after his contract was up, and that it desired to keep him happy enough to re-sign and not give any company an inside track towards competing stateside.

Either way, the greatest professional wrestler of the last 20 years, perhaps even over a longer epoch, is returning to active duty. I could not be happier for him to do the only thing that seemingly gave him fulfillment. I also am not too concerned about Bryan's health, because again, for whatever reason WWE has cleared him, he's too high-profile a case to let hang from a single thread. I don't know any other details of his schedule right now. Whether he comes back for a full schedule or some kind of part-time schedule that allows him to work select dates is unknown. However, the fact that he's wrestling again is a beautiful, beautiful thing.
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Pro Wrestling SKOOPZ on The Wrestling Blog: Vol. 4, Issue 11

March 21, 2018, 12:15 pm
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He has returned!
Photo Credit: WWE.com
Are you ready to celebrate the GREATEST COMEBACK IN WRESTLING HISTORY? What, Bryan Danielson? HELL NO. Everyone knew he was coming back sooner or later, ESPECIALLY ME. I'm talking about HORB FLERBMINBER, baby. That's right, I have RETURNED from the gnarliest hangover in WRESTLING JOURNALISM HISTORY. I would say I'm never drinking that much grappa again, but YOU NEVER KNOW WHEN RYAN SATIN IS GOING TO THROW DOWN THE GROSS LIQUOR GAUNTLET AT THE AIRPORT HOLIDAY INN IN ONTARIO, CA. I must remain as vigilant to consume massive amounts of disgusting liquor as I am to report the news. AND I AM THE MOST VIGILANT AT DOING THAT.

Of course, you could just consume the HORB EXPERIENCE via the newsletter, but WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT? That would be like going to Old Country Buffet and not stuffing your cargo pants full of take-home leftovers. THEY HAVE ENOUGH FOOD TO FEED 12 ARMIES, I CAN TAKE MORE THAN I CAN EAT HOME, DAMMIT. First, you shove popcorn shrimp into your front leg poc... I mean, follow me on Twitter, @HorbFlerbminber. You won't get a much better INSTANT NEWS EXPERIENCE than by following me on the Twitters. If you follow me, you'll know when exactly Roman Reigns will fail his next drug test, mainly after I inject his bladder with enough THC to take down Rob Van Dam. You can also order old newsletters so you can BASK in my accuracy. For example, you can get the following issues now:
  • Smarch 13, 1979 - I chronicle how the lousy weather has affected business.
Somehow, that's the only issue I have available. Weird. Anyway, now the news.

- Daniel Bryan has been cleared for wrestling in a WWE ring again. The reactions have ranged from pure joy to annoyance in the way he was booked in his return segment, so it looks like things have picked up right where they left off when he was put out of action the last time he was active.

- Bryan made his return with an impassioned promo to kick off Smackdown, which brought the fans to their feet with the exception of his 20 minute aside where he went off on a tangent about how no one can cheer for him unless they compost all their food-waste. It was truly an odd experience.

- Bryan closed the show taking an apron bump from Kevin Owens. Bryan insisted that Owens and Sami Zayn actually drop a nuclear bomb on him, but everyone agreed killing all the fans in attendance would be bad for public relations.

- Bryan was actually cleared to wrestle as early as January 27, the day before the Royal Rumble, which makes the decision not to have him enter and win even MORE INFURIATING.

- WWE is hopeful that Bryan will re-sign with the company now that he has been cleared, but if he's not, expect his final WWE match to be against The Ruby Weapon at SummerSlam.

- Paul "Triple H" Levesque on Bryan's return: "Our primary concern is the health and wellness of our performers, so it was critical that we had Bryan see all 20 of the nation's top veterinarians before we cleared him to compete in a ring."

- WrestleMania 35 was announced for MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ again, marking the second outdoor Mania to take place in the New York area. The tagline will be "EYYY, I'M WRESTLIN' OVER HERE, MADONE!"

- John Cena challenged the Undertaker again on RAW Monday for WrestleMania, and instead got Kane for next week. Come to think about it, that sequence of events perfectly encapsulates everything WWE has done to its fans since the Invasion.

- Brock Lesnar apparently has heat on him from Randy Orton, who has been lobbying to be able to beat the shit out of POCs in handcuffs after they've assaulted police for months now.

- Meanwhile, Francis Ngannou has called for Lesnar to return to UFC and face him. "Hey, I could use an easy victory," he said when asked for his reasoning.

- The Ultimate Deletion was not included in the Hulu cut for RAW. When I asked a representative from Hulu, that person said "Well, our uncle works for WWE and he said that no one who's getting buried after WrestleMania and released like the marks they are will be included on Hulu edits from here on out." It was unclear if they were referring to Matt Hardy, Bray Wyatt, or Wolfgang Hardy, who has signed a futures deal with the company in exchange for formula, diapers, and TapouT brand onesies.

- Dave Meltzer, reporting via sources he read from a burner Tumblr, says AJ Styles should be good to go for WrestleMania.

- JBL blasted Meltzer on Twitter, but then followed it up by praising Peter Rosenberg and Sam Roberts, just so you didn't forget that some battles have no babyfaces.

- Mark Henry will be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame. Sources say his son, A Sentient Hand, will induct him.

- Zack Sabre, Jr. has won the New Japan Cup by defeating Tetsuya Naito, Kota Ibushi, and Hiroshi Tanahashi in consecutive matches by submission. If Gedo doesn't win Best Booker in a unanimous vote for this year for this glorious push of a glistening new talent, I swear to God. I SWEAR TO GOD.

- Sabre wiil eschew challenging Kazuchika Okada or Minoru Suzuki with his Cup win and instead challenge Theresa May for the Prime Ministership of the United Kingdom.

- Rey Mysterio has signed a deal with AroLucha, one that includes partial ownership of the company. Ron and Don Harris made the deal to show how not racist they are by allowing one of "them" to have a stake in the company.

- 205 LIVE RESULTS: Mustafa Ali won the right to face Cedric Alexander for the vacant Cruiserweight Championship while 95 percent of the fans still haven't gotten to their seats yet at the WrestleMania preshow by defeating Drew Gulak.

- WWE has announced it will attempt to set the record for "most urine expelled by a crowd in a single ten minute period" at WrestleMania by announcing Randy Orton vs. Jinder Mahal vs. Bobby Roode for the United States Championship.

- WWE has officially removed Fabulous Moolah's name from the title of the women's Battle Royale to happen at WrestleMania. The match will now be called the Stephanie McMahon Women's Empowerment Battle Royale Presented by Stephanie McMahon for the Greater Good and Glory of Stephanie McMahon.

- The Greatest Royal Rumble event, in addition to the 50 wrestler over-the-top battle royale, will include seven title matches, including the newly created House of Saud Championship that will only be defended for the amusement of Saudi princes while entertaining US oil executives.

- James Ellsworth vs. Matt Riddle has been signed for Joey Janela's Spring Break 2. If Riddle wins, he takes home the World Intergender Championship. If Ellsworth wins though, Riddle has to give him his chin.

Last week's poll results are in, and 45 percent think Miller Lite tastes great, while 42 percent say it's less filling. The other 13 percent of you are teetotaling dorks. This week
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Twitter Request Line, Vol. 228

March 22, 2018, 11:15 am
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The greatest ever? Far from it, but that perception is WWE's fault.
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:

Charlotte Flair is the best women's wrestler of all-time? Who considers her this? WWE canon doesn't even have her surpassing Trish Stratus and Lita yet, I don't think. If you look across the spectrum of women's wrestling, she's probably not "greater" than many of the AJW women's talents from the '90s like Bull Nakano, Aja Kong (who's still active), Manami Toyota (who only just recently retired), or Akira Hokuto. I think that the fact that Flair can so easily be named "the greatest" by a modern fan (and this is no shade on the person asking this question, I swear) speaks to how poorly WWE had presented women's wrestling up to the time that Flair, Sasha Banks, and Becky Lynch were introduced on the main roster. These current female stars are basically blazing trails by acting as the for-real versions of Buddy Rogers, Bruno Sammartino, and others from when Capitol Wrestling was renamed the World-Wide Wrestling Federation and thus modern WWE history was born. I don't mean to answer this question in brusque manner, but it feels like it's based on a premise that isn't all that true.

The safest place is probably WWE because of its combination of a relatively low-impact style and the money it has available to at least reactively treat injuries. Yes, I know, WWE's track record with proactive protection of workers and even its history in treating injuries is awful, but I mean, it's not that much better anywhere else. Hiroshi Tanahashi has been working hurt probably this whole decade. Wrestling companies on the whole don't give a flying fuck about their workers. It's just WWE has some measures in place that make it seem like it cares for legal reasons, most of which are in the ring (banned moves, no piledrivers, no blading rules, etc.).

Creatively is a whole different question, and the answer certainly isn't WWE. The knee-jerk reaction would be that Bryan f'n Danielson could very much work as a Cody Rhodes-esque freelancer, work wherever he wanted, and choose the place to settle down in that allows him the most creative freedom. Basically, the answer is "anyone but WWE." Danielson right now is probably bigger than any non-WWE company in the world, even New Japan Pro Wrestling. He could go anywhere and get creative control. Staying in WWE would probably get him similar clamped down stories from before his injuries, maybe with more latitude because he's headlined WrestleMania and spent a good deal of time as an authority figure, so he's got that part-time aura on him, no matter how strenuously a schedule he works. However, no matter how much latitude he gets, he's not going to be able to go into Vince McMahon's office and demand he get to plot out his own story. Top guys get that power, sure, but even then, McMahon learned a lesson when he guaranteed it to Bret Hart in his contract. I'm also sure that as much latitude as guys like Undertaker and John Cena have, they don't butt heads with McMahon on the reg. They're not shot callers. Danielson can be a shot caller if he freelances and does tours of Ring of Honor one month and CMLL the next or whatever.

Kris Wolf is the top answer, and most of the time, it isn't even serious wrestling or wrestling at all. Hell, in fact, you could probably make the case for the entire STARDOM roster as being the answer to this question. It's such a gif-able promotion, from Kairi Hojo elbow drops to Hana Kimura walking by and flipping the bird. I should probably sub to STARDOM World, shouldn't I?

Well, WWE would have to re-sign him first. Bryan's contract is up in the autumn, I think. It's not enough time for him to drop out and show up at All In probably, but if WWE doesn't get him to sign a new deal, he could be gone from the company in time to start building towards a marquee match at WrestleKingdom. I'm not sure what the temperature is between the two sides. I think that WWE clearing him might be a gesture on its end to keep him in the fold. I don't know many backstage details at this point on his contract situation. However, should he re-sign with WWE, he'd almost certainly have to be on the brand that Roman Reigns isn't on. In that respect, the brand split is still a success, although the ending of exclusive pay-per-views might muddle that situation even further. As long as Bryan is in the pool with guys who can keep up with him and away from narratives where the crowds would sense he's clearly a secondary player to Reigns, he'll be fine I think. Again, the injury situation and the time spent as an authority figure has some unexpected silver lining to it.

The best executed one by far is the Undertaker, right? I mean, he got a shitload of mileage out of the spooky mortician gimmick, and it forms the backbone of his most recent current character, no matter how warped and twisted by his fetishistic love for MMA it became. The least successful one would be nearly every other second job gimmick that WWE tried in the mid-'90s. Duke "The Dumpster" Droese. Isaac Yankem, DDS. The Goon. Abe "Knuckleball" Schwartz. The level of thought put into them and the caliber of worker behind them doomed all of them to fail.

The chances are decent, I think, as long as Angle and Bryan retain their current roles as brand general managers. I'm not sure where the match would be, and both are trending towards losing their positions of power anyway. That being said, I'm sure WWE would find a reason to put them together in the ring if it really wanted to. As for how good the match would be, well, Angle hasn't really looked all that great in his return matches. However, if WWE has one guy who can get a really good match out of anyone, let alone someone with the skillset of Angle, it's Bryan. So I wouldn't be too pessimistic if that match happened.

1. The Miz - WWE has been building up heat between Bryan and Miz since the brand split began, and Miz is still using those YES! kicks. So the payoff had to be delayed for awhile. Who cares? I still wanna see Bryan punt Miz's head clean into the nosebleeds.

2. Andrade "Cien" Almas - El Idolo probably isn't staying in NXT for much longer, and I feel like Bryan would be a perfect feud for him at any point in his early main roster career. Bryan has stated he wants to work lucha, so he can handle Almas' native stylings. Plus, if the Almas/Johnny Gargano matches have taught the world anything, it's that the former La Sombra vs. an elementally pure babyface has off-the-charts potential.

3. AJ Styles - C'mon, the two best wrestlers of the last decade squaring off, preferably in a pay-per-view main event? I want it. I NEED IT.

Honorable mention to Shinsuke Nakamura, since both guys want to do that match and since Bryan is probably an opponent that would make Nak switch out of paycheck mode. Second honorable mention would be for Rusev, since Bryan so fortuitously came back on Rusev Day.

Protected user @adamsgroove:
What do you think will happen the night after WrestleMania? NXT call-ups, things of that nature...
My guess is the first seeds get planted for the Roman Reigns/Seth Rollins program that will probably headline RAW throughout the spring. I don't know how they get planted, but they will. Second, watch for Carmella to cash in her Money in the Bank briefcase, but not on Asuka. I foresee her sneaking over to RAW and sneak attacking either Nia Jax or Alexa Bliss and taking that title, citing that her contract never had any language stating she had to cash in on the Smackdown Women's Champion. Undertaker will probably formally retire, win or lose against John Cena at Mania. As for the call-ups, I'm guessing that you'll get the Authors of Pain, Lars Sullivan, Ethan Carter III, the Ember Moon/Shayna Baszler loser, Kairi Sane, and the Iconic Duo.
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NXT In 60 Seconds

March 23, 2018, 7:00 am
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[Ironside theme intensifies]
Photo Credit: Some Unemployed Guy's Twitter
Ciampa: comes out
Full Sailors (yes, they're back): hold up Johnny Winkyface signs BOOOOOO!  YOU SUCK!  YOU SUCK!
Ciampa: holds up his index finger and raises the mic
Full Sailors: BOOOOO!  JOHNNY WRESTLING!  clap clap clapclapclap
Ciampa: shakes his head, finally blows it HE'S GONE!  GONE!  
Full Sailors: BOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Ciampa: NEWS FLASH: he's not walking down that damn aisle, he's GONE!      
Full Sailors: BOOOOOOOOOOOO!  YOU SUCK!  YOU SUCK!
Ciampa: raises the mic again
Full Sailors: BOOOOOOOOOOOO!  CIAMPA SUCKS!  CIAMPA SUCKS!
Ciampa: extends his arms Come At Me Bro style, drops the mic and leaves
Full Sailors: BOOOOOOOOOOOO!  signs up, so many signs
Ciampa: starts ripping the ones he can reach, from a young woman, an old lady, some fan in a mask
Some Fan In A Mask: removes it... you can probably guess
Johnny Wrestling: jumps over the barricade and beats Tomasshole like a rented mule
Full Sailors: RUAHHHHH~!
Security: comes out to break it up and remove the still fired Gargano
Gargano: swears further vengeance to come while being carried away
Full Sailors: Let them fight!  Let them fight!
Nigel McGuiness: He has to abide by the stipulation!  This is professional wrestling; we can't just have chaos ensue!
Ciampa: (screaming off-mic in the ring) He doesn't work here anymore!  He's fired!  He was fired!

Tyler Bate: Unfortunately due to some injuries, I cannot compete, and as such Mustache Mountain will forfeit their position in the Dusty Classic.
Roderick Strong: (via Twitter) Mr. Regal, I've been a model employee.  I haven't asked for much, but I'll ask for something now — the vacated spot in the Dusty Classic.  I'll find a partner, I just want the shot.
Mauro Ranallo: That request has been granted, and we'll find out who Roderick has for a partner... next!

Some Guy, BAY BAY: Unbelievable.
Kyle O'Reilly: He's at it again.
SG, BB: He's at it again!
Bobby Fish: Why?
Kyle: Roddy got into the Classic?  He doesn't belong anywhere near it!
SG, BB: He's not even a tag team guy!
Bobby: He's a loser.  And it doesn't matter who wins the Classic; they just get the honor of having us lay them out.
Adam Cole: Speaking of getting laid out, that's what I'm going to do to Kassius Ohno in the main event tonight.  He's been running his mouth on Twitter so I'm going to shut it.  You guys can take the night off.
Bobby: Really?
Adam: Yes.
Kyle: Much obliged.
Adam: Just like us, this win tonight will be undisputed.  they all flash their hand sign

Oney Lorcan & Danny Burch: come out to pops
Roderick Strong: comes out to a bigger pop
Pete Dunne: guess what
Full Sailors: YEAAAA~!  BRUISERWEIGHT!  BRUISERWEIGHT!
Roddy & Oney: wrestle to a stand still, more or less then tag out
Pete: eventually takes over on Danny thanks to joint manipulation
BruiserStrong: Tandem gourdbuster!  Sandwich chops!
Danny: lays out Pete with a Owen style stiff-legged second rope missile dropkick
Both: tag out
The Man Who Has Arrived For The Intercourse: Flying kick!  Running Euro!  Lariat!  Running blockbuster!
Danny: tags in
Roddy: sends Danny into Oney
Pete: blind tags in Flying second rope stomp to the arm!  X-Plex!
Oney: saves but gets tossed afterwards
Brits: start slapping the uckfay out of each other
Burch: Headbutt!  German release!
Roddy: Save!
Oney: Nope!  half and half suplexes him onto Pete
Referee: Kickout!
Danny: crossfaces Pete
Oney: half crabs Roddy
Roddy: eventually kicks free and sends Oney into the crossface, breaking it up and providing a receipt at the same time
Pete: Step up Owenzuigiri!
Danny: Exploder!
Nigel: He pivoted before he threw it, and he threw him closer to his corner!  Does he realize it?
Roddy: DUDE.  blind tags in Oh, right, he can't hear Nigel from here.
BruiserStrong: Assisted backbreaker!
Roddy: End of Heartache!
Referee: Winners!
Pete: raises Roddy's hand
Roddy: wait what
Pete: shrug I like winning.  shrugs again

SOON

Aliyah: comes out
Ember Moon: also comes out
Aliyah: as such, is doomed
Shayna Baszler: comes out to the announce I run this.  They tap, nap or... snap!
Ember: (from the ring) This is for you.  Alley-oop Samoan drop!  War cry!  Handspring avalanche forearm!  Eclipse!  stares down Baszler the whole three count
Referee: Winner!
Ember: yells at Shayna from a turnbuckle while holding up the NXT Women's World Championship
Shayna: jumps on the announce table and yells at her from there

Raul Mendoza: comes out
Andrade "Cien" Almas:throws him off the ramp then issues the following mostly in Spanish Aleister thinks he's smart?  I'm superior, and I deserve respect as the champion — as El Idolo!  You disrespect my wo... business associate, you disrespect me. So I'm calling you out, you piece of (bleep) ((shit))
Everybody: whoa can he do that on WWEN?
Cien: Face me next week and pay for his disrespect. 

Some Guy: comes out
Everyone In The Building Who Isn't On Announce Duties: ADAM COLE, BAY BAY!
Kassius Ohno: is also present
Cole: knocks down Ohno early AC, BB!
Ohno: Boot down the leapfrog attempt!  Togo senton!
Cole: is sent to the apron, hobbles around on the outside
Ohno: reaches between the ropes to get him 
Cole: Enzuigiri!  cackles, gets back in the ring for punching and stomping
Mauro: He's a regular Keyser Soze.
Cole: Cheating!  Backstabber!  I knew I was right earlier when I said this was going to be a
Ohno: RIGHT.  HAND.
Cole: ...effufe me.  Ware arr my teef?
Ohno: Axe Bomber!  Cyclone Kick!  FOREARM!
Cole: IS THAT ALL YOU GOT!?  Forearm flurry!
Ohno: Bike kick!
Cole: Last Shot!
Referee: Kickout!
Full Sailors: NXT!  NXT!
Ohno: Alley oop into the top rope!  Big right!  High tension forearm!
Cole: spills out
Ohno: gets him back in
Cole: Can't believe that crucifix didn't work.  Superkick!
Ohno: goes down to a knee
Cole: Basement superkick!  Superkick!  Last Shot!  Enzu Shining Wizard!
Referee: Winner!
Cole: Like there was ever a doubt.
Everyone In The Building Who Isn't On Announce Duties Or Just Got Pinned: ADAM COLE, BAY BAY!
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The Wrestling Blog's OFFICIAL Best in the World Rankings for March 26, 2018

March 26, 2018, 4:30 pm
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BACK AND BETTER THAN EVER
Photo 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. Daniel Bryan (Last Week: Not Ranked) - So, Bryan announced that he was cleared to wrestle and immediately took an apron bump on his way back to a presumed match at WrestleMania. What an absolute legend. He could have just put someone in a YES! Lock and been done with it, but when you're Bryan BY GOD Danielson, you don't half-ass things. You put the stank on it. I can't wait to see what he has in store at Mania and beyond.

2. Kota Ibushi (Last Week: Not Ranked) - The Golden Lovers vs. Young Bucks tag match from last night was everything it was billed to be and then some. A lot of that drama was centered around Matt Jackson and Kenny Omega, but man, Ibushi provided a lot of subtext and support. Even when he's not the focal point of the match, he still finds ways to inject his psychotic genius. I think the most memorable part of the match for me was when Ibushi just snatched Nick Jackson off the ropes before he could hit the Indytaker portion of the Meltzer Driver and powerbomb him through the table that was set up earlier in the match. The timing on that spot was impeccable.

3. Asuka (Last Week: 4) - Really, she needs to get onto Smackdown ASAP and break the chain, because if I have to see Nattie Neidhart in a feature role in the leadup to WrestleMania anymore when she's just gonna be fodder for the Women's Battle Royal, I'm gonna scream. I mean, Alexa Bliss doesn't want anymore of her. Let her face down Charlotte like she was meant to.

4. Joel Embiid (Last Week: 5) - The Sixers have clinched a playoff berth thanks to Joel Embiid staying healthy enough to score more minutes thus far than players such as Steph Curry, Isaiah Thomas, Kyrie Irving, and Kawhi Leonard. Embiid, Ben Simmons, and Robert Covington are also the most efficient three-man pairing in the league this year. This year has been the start of something really special. Oh yeah, and now Markelle Fultz is back. WOOP WOOP.

5. Minoru Suzuki (Last Week: Not Ranked) - It's funny that the guy who rode a bike into someone as offense in DDT is also the Murder Grandpa™ so believably and effectively. You know Tomohiro Ishii. I love the big bowling ball of a man, but when Suzuki was clubbing him in the face, I bought it. That's how much of a goddamn aura he projects. Also, he held Kazuchika Okada (and his Long Boys) at bay so that Zack Sabre, Jr. could tap Ishii out in the name of Socialism. What a good ally he is.

6. Braun Strowman (Last Week: 3) - I'm not sure Strowman even needs a tag partner, even against a team as HOSSY as The Bar. That being said, WWE should just let Alexa Bliss pull double duty and win the RAW Tag Team Championship to replace her RAW Women's Championship. What could go wrong, eh? Or maybe he should just team with Ronald McDonald as a statement against Wendy's continually robbing him of his grilled chicken. Dave Thomas would get these hands, but he's dead.

7. Piccini (Last Week: Not Ranked)OFFICIAL HOLZERMAN HUNGERS SPONSORED ENTRY - Could it be that the best pizza in the country is in a shore town on the Atlantic coast? Piccini makes a strong case with its wood-fired, thin crust menagerie of quality pies. Hell, even the chicken fingers are outstanding, mainly because they're freshly floured tenderloins and not premade frozen tendies. Ocean City, NJ has at least one thing over the town of the same name in Maryland.

8. Sister Jean (Last Week: Not Ranked) - Honestly, Catholicism is dumb, but Sister Jean as Loyola-Chicago's human mascot en route to the Final Four is kinda cute. It helps that they're the most likable team left, unless you happen to be from Philly. Even then, I'm from Philly, and I'm tepid on Villanova. Eh, either way, at least Duke didn't make it. Fuck Duke.

9. Terry Funk (Last Week: Not Ranked) - Joe Biden said he'd have kicked Donald Trump's ass had he heard him talk disparagingly about women in his vicinity, which caused one intrepid reporter, god bless them, to ask Terry Funk his thoughts on the potential match. You see, everything is pro wrestling nowadays. Why ask Terry Funk though? Because people are tired of going to the Ric Flair well, and well, Hulk Hogan is still slightly radioactive. Anyway, The Funker said that the match would be shitty, and I'd be inclined to agree with him. Trump probably hasn't been in a shoot fight ever, and the way he sold that stunner at WrestleMania XXIII leads me to believe that he'd suck in a worked one too. The only fight I wanna see Trump in, oddly enough, is Funk working him over in a hardcore match where Trump gets zero offense in. But that's for another less public blog altogether.

10. Oney Lorcan (Last Week: 10) - Loyola-Chicago, Villanova, Michigan, and Kansas may have made the Final Four in men's college basketball, but Oney Lorcan is all four slots in the Final Four in porkin'.
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Search

On Golden Lovers vs. Young Bucks

March 27, 2018, 1:00 pm
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They tore the pyramid down on Sunday
Photo via New Japan Pro Wrestling
Strong Style Evolved was nothing to write home about, compared at least to both G1 Special shows from last year. Sure, the wrestling was fine, especially on the back-half of the show. If you edited some of the slog parts out of the Hangman Page/Knife Pervert Jay White match, that turns into a fine semifinal title match on a strong B-show. The Kazuchika Okada and Tomohiro Ishii vs. Zack Sabre, Jr. and Minoru Suzuki match was a delightfully violent feud-furthering interstitial that helped heap more coal into the furnace for the Okada/Sabre IWGP Championship match this coming Sunday. Several other matches had fun moments. However, while the G1 Specials felt like marquee events, Strong Style Evolved had a distinct house show feeling to it. The show, up until the end of the White/Page match, felt fun but inconsequential at best.

Then, the Golden Lovers and Young Bucks took the ring and gave the event its raison d'etre.

The Young Bucks at least had been clamoring for the match out of character since Kenny Omega got to New Japan in 2014. It certainly has been a dream match for a lot of people for even longer than that wait time, but it needed just the right setup to get there. Honestly, I went into the match having just read the crib notes for the build, but the wonder of modern-day wrestling makes promotions like New Japan and their narratives a lot easier to follow without needing to watch any of the footage, let alone all of it. I left the match feeling the full effect of what the four men were trying to do, which is what any match should do. The eternal nature of pro wrestling can make jumping into a certain promotion at any given time daunting, which is why it takes a team effort from everyone involved to be able to get an audience up to speed with a recap and a complete wrestling match. It's why this match left a similar impression on me that I imagine it did to those who have watched the whole time.

Basically, the match was centered around the drama between Omega and the Bucks, specifically Matt Jackson, who took the business end of a blind shove during the former's ejection from the Bullet Club. That thread, dissociating the Bucks as a collective and allowing one to have emotions to develop and personal heat to fester, was refreshing from bat. Whether in New Japan or Pro Wrestling Guerrilla, the Bucks presentation has almost been that of a hivemind between the two. Even in Chikara when they ganged up on the youngest Jackson/Massie, Malachi, it was always Matt and Nick blending in their motivations. In this match, Matt acted as the more aggrieved, the more hurt party, while Nick played the role of the devil on his shoulder, nudging him to indulge his chaotic evil tendencies and punish Omega for his treason.

It's the kind of characterization that has been missing from Young Bucks matches for whatever reason, but to be fair, a whole lot of lauded and great tag teams go a long time, maybe their whole tenures together without differentiating between the two guys in the team. It's not necessarily a flaw, in that a tag team oftentimes represents a collective interest that is imbued into double the manpower. Of course, when you get what you ask for, you might just end up with a storyline that highlights Road Warrior Hawk's alcoholism. It's what made the Bucks' entire reason for being in the match stand out even more boldly. Coupled with Matt's dedication to selling a long term back injury to add to the in-ring psychology, and basically, it was the platonic ideal of what a Young Bucks match should be if couched in story rather than in having a big spotfest with a ton of flipz. Don't get me wrong; that kind of match is great too when it's needed in an exhibition setting, like at the first Dragon Gate USA show nine years ago (NINE YEARS GODDAMMIT I'M OLD).

On the other side of the ring, the plot was centered on Omega's internal strife rather than external conflict, which is not really something you see all that much in a wrestling match. I mean, yeah, man vs. man is the dominant theme in an actual wrestling match because well it should be explicitly obvious, right? Man vs. self is something that pops up from time to time, and when it's done well, it can create a lasting moment that is etched in history. Who could forget Ultimate Warrior staring into his hands, wondering what else he had to do to put the Macho King away at WrestleMania VII1, or when Sami Zayn wrestled with whether he would cream Neville in the face with the NXT Championship belt at Takeover: R-Evolution? To stretch that over an entire match though and not have it come off as self-indulgent is risky. I thought that at times, Omega wobbled on the line a bit between hammy and poignant, and he needed help from Matt or Kota Ibushi to keep him on track. Then again, what is wrestling but a wholly cooperative act anyway? Besides, it's to be expected that a wrestler's execution feel shticky at times. Robert DeNiro got into acting and not wrestling for a reason. Still, he got the point across loud and clear.

Even more impressive is Ibushi's role in the match as a glue guy. Okay, maybe impressive isn't the word, because it's hard really to look at his role in the match and say he was The Guy without sounding like a contrarian trying to show off that I see things no one else does. No one likes that guy, because oftentimes, that guy is full of shit. Maybe the word is "surprising," since no one really looks to Kota Ibushi, the guy who takes unnecessary bumps on his neck in conspicuous spots during the match or who jumps off high shit just to do it or who is the patron saint of Dramatic Dream Team and its so-far-out-of-the-box-that-it's-on-the-sidewalk-outside approach to wrestling to be more of a background player. But again, it was the story that needed to be told. The match belonged to Omega and Matt really. Ibushi wasn't there to throw someone into a river, but he was there to remind Omega that he should probably hit a Jackson brother with his knee really hard or be there at the right time to interrupt a Meltzer Driver into a Golden Star Bomb into a table or to change his footing mid-move on a double superplex so that he or Omega or the guy taking the move didn't end up with a neck at a permanent 60 degree angle. His role in the match almost felt too subtle that it was setting up some kind of "Everybody Hates Kenny" turn at the end of the match that left Omega without a Club or a Lover to guide him through the wilderness.

Thankfully though, Vince McMahon is not in charge of New Japan Pro Wrestling, so Love did indeed win out in the end. Ibushi and Omega continued on in their quest, and hey, at least one of the Bucks was amenable to a reconciliation, even if it wasn't the more aggrieved one in Matt. However, the foreshadowing to Matt's eventual makeup with Omega happened when Cody Rhodes hit the ring and berated the Bucks after they failed to win, which again, was a nice sort of denouement to keep the overall narrative going. Overall, it was a satisfying end to the show, a clear match of the year candidate, and something that is memorable and accessible enough for a new fan to nucleate a following around. I'd say it was a rousing success, validating the need for a show of that nature, even if the rest struggled to keep pace with its marquee segment.

As a postscript, if you're looking for a blow-by-blow recap and are disappointed with the above, well, you should know that isn't my bag as analyzing big picture themes is. However, if you do want something that takes more of a chronological analysis, TJ Hawke wrote a dandy of a recap with great breakdowns interjected throughout. Those are the best things to read anyway. Who cares to read a script of what happened when you can just watch it? Tell me why something happened, y'know?

1 - Although that technically could be construed as "Man vs. God" as Warrior was speaking to his guiding deities, if you're going by strict canon.
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Pro Wrestling SKOOPZ on The Wrestling Blog: Vol. 4, Issue 12

March 28, 2018, 1:15 pm
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GUESS WHO GOT THE POOP POISONING?
Photo Credit: WWE.com
HORB FLERBMINBER is back, and I don't have enough time in the day to tell you all the reasons why the following news report will CHANGE YOUR LIFE. Honestly, I shouldn't even be reporting half of this. Why? Is it because most of it isn't true? PREPOSTEROUS. My news is the LEAST FAKE NEWS OF ALL-TIME. It's because for most people, the truth hurts, rating about at a nine or even a full ten on the pain scale. THAT'S WHY DAVE MELTZER NEVER REPORTS ANYTHING ACCURATE. He's too much of a WIMP to SMACK YOU IN THE FACE with the straight dope! That and because he's a fucking rube who gets worked too easily by his sources and who takes it out on women in general and in specific, but that's neither here nor there. Or is it? YOU BE THE JUDGE.

Now, you could just read the below newsletter and do nothing else with your day, BUT WHERE'S THE FUN IN THAT, PISSANT? Follow me on Twitter, @HorbFlerbminber. I swear, I won't bombard your feed with links to weight-loss scams and GoFundMe accounts to buy Brock Lesnar Guy some sushi. I WILL DROP NEWS NUGGETS ON YOU LIKE DONKEY KONG THROWS BARRELS AT ITALIAN PLUMBERS. Only I know when and where the Johnny Bravo tape is going to drop, and HOW MUCH KUNG FU HE DOES ON IT. Also, only I have the brains to rule Lylat. You MUST follow me on Twitter. Also, you should definitely purchase one or more back issues of the newsletter, because what's better than reading old news? I know I can't think of a better activity. You could order them from me, except I forgot where I left the key to the vault where I keep the list of issues I have available. And the actual archive is somewhere in the black mining hills of Dakota, guarded by a guy named Rocky Raccoon. Then one day his woman, who had like fifty different names, hit him in the eye and left him for some dickhead named Dan. It's a long story and involves a Bible or some shit? I don't know. Anyway, here's the news:

- Shane McMahon was hospitalized over the weekend when he came down with an acute case of diverticulitis while on vacation in the Caribbean. He reportedly did so as a rib on Brock Lesnar.

- McMahon was still announced as Daniel Bryan's tag partner for WrestleMania against Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn. It's unclear as to whether that announcement was a work or if McMahon will work the match with an IV drip in and his colostomy bag still attached. If it's the latter, the match still won't be as shitty as Triple H and Stephanie McMahon vs. Ronda Rousey and Kurt Angle.

- STRONG STYLE EVOLVED RESULTS: I got semen all over my favorite hat after the main event.

- BACKSTAGE NEWS FROM STRONG STYLE EVOLVED: Will Ospreay wasn't interested in challenging Rey Mysterio after his match with Jushin Liger until he found out Mysterio had bought shares of a wrestling company co-owned by Nazis.

- In an upset, Josh Barnett and Jim Ross didn't win Least Professional Commentators of the Weekend, as the chucklefucks from WrestleCircus went for it in a big way by referring to Aaron Solow as "Mr. Bayley" during their stream.

- In the latest development of the Johnny Gargano/Tommaso Ciampa angle in NXT, Ciampa woke up this morning next to a decapitated horse head in his bed.

- Rusev has been added to the United States Championship Match at WrestleMania so that all you fuckin' diaper babies who chant for him can have something for yourselves. You dorks happy? HUH?

- Charlotte Flair missed Smackdown and the Mixed Match Challenge last night for minor dental surgery. She apparently got razor fangs attached to her incisors so she could get an advantage over Asuka at WrestleMania.

- Women will not be competing at all at The Greatest Royal Rumble event in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia later on this year, because if you want to get in good with the House of Saud, you have to follow their rules.

- NXT will be heading to France in the summer, but not to wrestle, but as a trip to help campaign for Vince McMahon family friend Marine LePen.

- Road Dogg will induct Jeff Jarrett into the WWE Hall of Fame, indicating that Jarrett won't actually be inducted at all and that Dogg will have been the one who deserved the induction all along.

- Meanwhile, Paul Heyman will induct Bill Goldberg into the Hall, because Vince McMahon thought it'd be in poor taste if Barry Horowitz did it.

- WCW Saturday Night will be coming to the WWE Network this summer, as if Bryan Alvarez didn't already have ENOUGH to cover on his podcast of current events.

- Braun Strowman tweeted out that he's mad at Wendy's for not having any grilled chicken on two separate visits to two separate locations. In response, Wendy's sent Strowman an entire metric ton of grilled chicken breasts and reanimated late founder Dave Thomas so he could personally apologize to the Monster Among Men for disservicing him.

- Ronda Rousey, in an ESPN interview with Mike Golic, revealed she's been training with John Titor.

- Vader underwent open heart surgery this past week. The damage was much more extensive than was originally thought, and he'll have a much longer road ahead of him before he can get back on Twitter and tweet pictures of his dick while badmouthing Will Ospreay.

- Mark Henry told TMZ Sports that he was trying to stay out of the ring as much as he could, but by the time the reporter had noticed Henry was wearing his salmon suit, it was too late and had already been World's Strongest Slammed through a fishtank.

- Henry also said that he and other Black superstars in the locker room think Hulk Hogan has a lot of work to do before he should be able to come back to WWE, but that they're ready for him to come back anyway because Vince McMahon only recognizes their opinions in February.

- Katsuyori Shibata doesn't consider himself retired yet, and to expedite his return to the ring, he's been drinking liquid oxygen straight from the pressurized tank.

- Michelle McCool recently posted a picture with her and the Undertaker flipping off John Cena and telling him to, quote, "suck their balls, their big hairy balls."

- Major League Wrestling has signed a television deal with beIN Sports. The big news is that there's a wrestling company called Major League Wrestling and a television network called beIN Sports. Wild.

Last week's poll is in, and the results are too lewd to publish. This week:
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Twitter Request Line, Vol. 229

March 29, 2018, 12:30 pm
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It's time for Sheamus to invade Muppet home turf, for the kids of course.
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:

The obvious answer is Sheamus, because he's already had a dope Muppet segment with Beeker. He's just got too affable a personality that even when he's supposed to be playing a prick, his warmth and avuncularity just seeps through. Elias already has guitar skills down, so he can definitely sing an educational ditty with Elmo. John Cena's another obvious choice because he's lived the kid's show life already. Becky Lynch and Bayley feel like wrestlers whose personalities lend themselves to interacting with Muppets and children. Finally, to go with a non-WWE choice, I'm not sure Toru Yano isn't already a Muppet, so he'd definitely fit in on Sesame Street.

Oh god no.

Okay, maybe that was just a little glib or brusque, but the thing is Jarrett at least provided some on-screen value, something for people other than dudes who followed the backstage stuff to latch onto. Vince Russo however, man, he didn't really become an on-screen character until he started working for the competition. He has barely any cache with the regular fan, and none of that cache is good. I will be utterly shocked if Russo ever gets into the WWE Hall of Fame.

The money main event in my mind is probably a Universal Championship match between Roman Reigns and Batista. The smoke is emanating from the windows at Titan Towers and from whatever movie set Batista is on this week. He wants to come back for a tour, he wants to make it full-time, and he's got the star power that automatically, he rockets to the top of the card when he comes back. Obviously, that match headlines the RAW side. If you want a Smackdown main event for SummerSlam that rips, how about Daniel Bryan taking on Shinsuke Nakamura? This is a match the two have wanted to do forever, and now that Nakamura is in WWE and Bryan is finally cleared.

A wild-card main event for the show would fall into WWE's dreaded "making history" category and having a women's match headline the show. To be fair, women have been headline for another singles match to headline a pay-per-view, and honestly, the fact that the two matches that HAVE headlined shows were both gimmick matches (Hell in a Cell '16, this year's Royal Rumble), lends a ton of credence to the fact that WWE is only doing this for lip service. I have two big women's main events that could go on last though. Well, one is a specific match, and another is a big-name wrestler on one side going up against a potential open set of opponents on the other. The specific match is Sasha Banks vs. Bayley. The seeds have been planted for the main roster feud, and while their relegation to the [INSERT ICONIC FEMALE WRESTLER HERE] Battle Royale at Mania has ruffled feathers, that decision has led to a silver lining in that their brewing feud can shine on a platform that isn't overshadowed. Considering Banks and Bayley should have headlined at the first Takeover in Brooklyn, giving them the last slot at SummerSlam in the same building is a hell of a makegood.

The other option would be for Ronda Rousey to headline a Big Two pay-per-view. Whom would she face off against? Good question! She has more of a diversified list of choices than Reigns, Bryan, or the Bayley/Banks match would have that feel right. She could put her money where her mouth is and head off against Asuka's streak. A match against any one of the NXT Four Horsewomen would have cache attached to it right away. The wild card of this wild card entry, however, is to start building towards the MMA Four Horsewomen EXPLODING the night after Mania and headlining with Rousey vs. Shayna Baszler. I mean, that match not only has to happen, but it should happen in the main event of a pay-per-view given their history. Why not SummerSlam?

I'm confident someone's going to turn on someone else. Sami Zayn could turn on Kevin Owens or vice versa, but that might have to wait until they've been reinstated to Smackdown or end up going to RAW after losing this match. Bryan could turn on McMahon, but I don't think WWE is going to turn Bryan heel in their parlance. Obviously, McMahon is the real life heel, but to Vince McMahon and his staff, the McMahons are the biggest babyfaces in the world, especially Shane. However, if I got good enough odds, I would bet money that McMahon isn't even going to make it to Mania. He's still recovering from diverticulitis, and I'm not sure two weeks will do the trick. IF anyone does act the fool and wrestle after such a major illness, it would be dipshit-ass Shane McMahon, but who knows, maybe discretion will be the better part of valor for him. In which case, the list of wrestlers who could replace McMahon becomes the list of wrestlers who will have great odds to turn on Bryan either during the match or after it. Kane comes to mind, but that might be too deflating and too taxing on him to stick around during the nitty-gritty of campaign season. Samoa Joe is another tasty choice, seeing as he's soooo close to coming back and is in need of someone to brutalize.

It's cliche to say Kazuchika Okada is tops on any list, but I mean, it feels like the booking matches up with him. He's over and he has critical acclaim. He feels like he should not only be a Champion, but the Champion. Next is The Miz, who always seems to elevate the Intercontinental Championship just by holding it. I'm not sure if it's because he can hang with the upper guys while holding court on that level, but he just feels right. After that, it's hard. Brock Lesnar is never fucking around. AJ Styles and Charlotte Flair are on Smackdown, which dampens their prestige by 50 percent right away. Alexa Bliss has been sputtering for months. The United States Championship should probably just get thrown in the garbage at this point. I can't think of another American Championship that really could compete in prestige right now. The rest of NJPW's titleholders feel like they blend in too much to the background even if I like them. Outside of Okada and Miz, no one else feels like they're on another level as Champion, like they're special.

This is a tough question, because everyone who isn't a McMahon has a case. Perhaps the Bray Wyatt/Roman Reigns/Bo Dallas contingent who missed time with non-wrestling illness could have a better case pending how WWE paid for their sick time, but I'm guessing that even though the company doesn't offer health insurance, it would pay for things like the mumps or whatever sickness ended up keeping those wrestlers out in October. I mean, Vince McMahon made them work on Christmas and New Year's for crying out loud. Any single wrestler on that roster could sue and make a case, although they'd all have to band together to even come close to the financial firepower WWE has in its back pocket to fight such a court case. Once again, thanks a lot Hulk Hogan, you rat fink snitch bastard.

I'll answer the second half first and say he should say as little as he wants to. Fuck the press, they don't need to know about his shoulder. Now, the jump shot is a problem for him, and it's troubling since the Sixers are short on shooters right now. However, he provides such a burst on the floor and vision in the passing game that putting him and Ben Simmons on the court at the same time feels like a nightmare for defenses, especially if they put two shooters and Joel Embiid around them. In this scenario, Fultz can be a perennial all-star and perhaps an all-NBA candidate in his best years. He might suffer from the same fate as like Klay Thompson or Andre Iguodala in Golden State, but if the Sixers become as good as advertised, then people will find reasons to praise everyone on the team, not just the Embiid/Simmons guys.

From protected user @adamsgroove:
Predictions for every single WrestleMania match?
Roman Reigns, Shinsuke Nakamura, Asuka, Nia Jax, The Usos, Braun Strowman and (plus one), The Miz, John Cena, Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens, Rusev, Mustafa Ali, Triple H and Stephanie McMahon, Matt Hardy in the Andre, and Becky Lynch in the Women's.

Again, I'm not convinced McMahon is actually working his match right now, but if he does, I can only imagine that whatever shit-insane bump he was going to take has been scrapped in light of his sickness. Or maybe not, since he's a McMahon and RULES DON'T APPLY TO MCMAHONS or whatever. I really can't get a read on the match right now because of the diverticulitis, but if he didn't get sick, I bet he was already on his way climbing up to the Superdome catwalk to do a test run or something.

OPENER: Roman Reigns vs. Brock Lesnar - I doubt Lesnar works a match as long as their Mania 31 encounter, and thus they have no reason to go on last. You want an epic to go on last.
2. Mustafa Ali vs. Cedric Alexander - After a short main event where Reigns definitively goes over Lesnar (think Lesnar/Goldberg from last year), you want an exciting, longish match to get the crowd really stoked. Ali and Alexander had a banger on 205 Live before the tournament; it only is fitting they get to top that to end it.
3. Daniel Bryan and Shane McMahon vs. Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens - I'm guessing this match will have SHENANIGANS, so it should go on between the two prestige matches.
4. Asuka vs. Charlotte Flair - This is a good match to go on at the middle of the show. It can be the climax, if you will.
5. Braun Strowman and [PARTNER] vs. The Bar - Again, more fuckery would abound in this match, so it's a buffer.
6. Finn Bálor vs. Seth Rollins vs. The Miz - The Intercontinental Championship match goes here to take advantage of an awakened crowd from the last match, since it'll probably go long.
7. Nia Jax vs. Alexa Bliss - I picked this match to buffer before the main event, not because I wanted to disrespect the women here, but because honestly, Jax should just fucken truck Bliss to win the belt.
MAIN EVENT: Shinsuke Nakamura vs. AJ Styles - This gives you an epic match to close the show, and it restores the  old chestnut that you main event WrestleMania if you win the Royal Rumble. Simple, right?

In this scenario, Undertaker/John Cena and the mixed tag match aren't even booked. The rest of the matches are on the pre-show on the Award Winning WWE Network™.
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NXT In 60 Seconds

March 30, 2018, 7:00 am
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Ladies and gentlevillains — E C III
Photo Credit: WWE.com
Rental Car: pulls up "Earlier Today"
Scumbag: gets out
Full Sailors Outside: BOOOOOOOOO
Cameraman's Questions: get ignored
Tomasshole: Mr. Regal! What is going on?  Johnny... he... he shows up at my work and sneak attacks me — the last act of a desperate scoundrel, may I add — my physical therapy. my apartment at three in the morning!  This is on you!
Master Regal: Johnny is out of order, I concur.
Tomasshole: I want him gone for good!
Master Regal: I propose to you at Takeover: New Orleans an unsanctioned match.
Tomasshole: Me?  In an unsanctioned match?  You know who I am, boss, you know what that means...
Master Regal: Should Johnathon win, he gets his job back.  Should you win, he's banished from NXT forever.
Tomasshole: For good?
Master Regal: nods For good.  But this time, Mr. Ciampa, you'll have to do it...yourself.
Who, The Band On Stage: YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH~!
My Girlfriend, Probably: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA Ciampa ya BURNT!
Ciampa: skulks away
Master Regal: heads inside the arena for An Important Announcement (that those of you reading this probably know already but w/e)

[opening credits]

Master Regal: enters the ring
Full Sailors: Regal!  Regal!  Regal!  Regal!  
Master Regal: I'd like to welcome you all to the show.
Full Sailors: cheer
Master Regal: Week in and week out, we bring you the best competitors from around the world.  As we continue to grow and expand, we need to find the standard bearers from everywhere around the world.  In line with that thinking, I am incredibly happy to announce at Takeover: New Orleans the debut of the NXT North American championship. 
Full Sailors: cheer
Master Regal: The first champion will carry that belt with pride, and continue our tradition of bringing you the best competitors from around the globe.
Familiar Voice To Orlando Wrestling Fans: I am in the top one percent!
Full Sailors: cheer louder E C III!  E C III!  E C III!
CFO$, Probably: I am!  The top one!  Top one percent!  I am!  The top one!  Top one percent!
ECIII: fires up his moniker on the Tron a la Robert Roode, Esq and gets in the ring I'm going to bask in this moment, because I deserve it.  You can keep that chant going, by all means.
Full Sailors: ECTHREE!  ECTHREE!  ECTHREE!  ECTHREE!
ECIII: Mr. Regal this is... too much!  I knew you were kind when you brought me into the hottest brand of sports and entertainment, NXT.  I knew you were reasonable when you rolled out the red carpet for me to strut — my — stuff and sign me to a very lucrative contract.   And how about that banger of a theme song, huh?
Full Sailors: One percent!  One percent!
ECIII: bobs his head to the chant But I didn't know you were so logical, to go out of your way to create a championship...
William Regal's Face: dafuq
Some Full Sailors: laughing
ECIII: And award this North American title to me on my very first day!
Full Sailors: NXTHREE!  NXTHREE!  NXTHREE!
ECIII: You're a very smart man, because only one man can represent the greatest region in the world (leans in and pats Regal on the back) North America...
Full Sailors: cheer
ECIII: ...a literal human money-printing machine...
Everybody But Master Regal: E C THREE!
Master Regal: Mr... Indeterminate Last Name, I'm happy to have you on board as a competitor, but no one is handed anything here.  You're very capable, otherwise you wouldn't have gotten signed.  So in New Orleans you will compete for the North American championship.
ECIII: smiles
Master Regal: Against five other men.
ECIII: smiles less
Master Regal: With the North American championship suspended over the ring.
ECIII: smiles even less
Master Regal: It's going to be a ladder match, is what I'm saying.
Full Sailors: cheer
ECIII: is not smiling
Full Sailors: do the D-Bry chant — it's back in vogue now, you know  Thank you, Regal!  clap clap clapclapclap
ECIII: mouths along with the chant, looking non enthused but pulls himself together in short order Mr. Regal, it can be five men, ten men, 15 men, hell, the whole roster, but come New Orleans?  I'll show everyone why I'm the top one percent of this industry.
Both Men: shake hands
Regal: leaves
ECIII: smiles again and gets another hearty round of applause


TM61: ("Earlier Today" at the PC) We just can't seem to get over the hump.  We need to change our attitude, maybe?  Sick of being in this position, because the Mighty Don't Kneel...
Cameraman: has noticed what's behind them and runs into the room to follow it
What's Behind TM61: a room in the PC
What's Happening In This Room In The PC: a fight
Shayna Baszler: whales away on Ember Moon
Ember Moon: whales away on Shayna Baszler
Homer Simpson: essentially in the background flipping a light switch off and on
Camerman: goes down in the process but still does their job like a boss
NPCs: Break it up!  Come on, you guys!  Not here!  Break it up!  (etc)
Both Women: swear vengeance on the other

Street Profits: swag on out
the Authors of Pain: walk out, but possibly in Samoan and intimidatingly
Montez Ford: talks smack, gets piefaced, tags out
the Authors: work over Dawkins
Angelo Dawkins: lands some moves
Ford: celebrates on the outside, then almost bumps into Paul Elleringbefore offering him a sip
Full Sailors: Take a sip!  Take a sip!
Ellering: bats it out of Ford's hand
Full Sailors: BOO!
Ford: glowers at Ellering
Ellering: backs up the ramp
the Authors: Last Chapter!
Referee: Winners! 

Kathy Kelley, Beam Of Pure Light: Mr. Regal, who else will be involved in the North American title match?
Master Regal: Adam Cole will be involved in the match as well.
Velveteen Dream: Regal.
Master Regal: Dream.
Dream: You look well.
Regal: I know.
Dream: This match is groundbreaking, but it's not an experience the NXT Universe can get behind without the Dream.
Regal: I...concur.  You are the third competitor.
Dream: The announcement broke ground, but by putting the Dream in...you just set the stage.  leaves
Regal: You know, he reminds me of a young me. 

Lars Sullivan: is back from the side of the milk carton
Victim: is half his size
Lars: gooifies the poor bastard Avalanche!  Press powerslam!  Diving headbutt!  Freak Accident!
Referee: Winner!
Lars: heads to the back
Master Regal: Mr. Sullivan, just the man I wanted to see.  I would like to insert you into the North American championship match in New Orleans.
Lars: Sounds fantastic, William.  I will unequivocally and categorically wreak destruction that only I can...not only with my bare hands, but with a ladder.  Enjoyable as this news comes, I still want Killian Dain.
Master Regal: No worries, he's in the match as well.
Lars: looks happy but not as happy as he could be
Master Regal: In accordance to your wishes and my wishes to not have what you Yanks call "a bullshit-ass go home show", I will make the match betwixt Killian and yourself for next week.
Certain People Who Run This Website: HOSSSSSSSSS FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT~!
Lars: GOOD. 

Dakota Kai:comes out
God''s Production Team: To the parking lot!
Andrade "Cien" Almas: is beating the crap out of Aleister Black, continues to beat the crap out of Aleister Black, then comes inside the arena to continue beating the crap out of Aleister Black (yelling this in Spanish) You're going to respect your champion!  You're going to respect my ... business associate!  chair shot across the back
Aleister: crumples
Cien: (still in Spanish) I'm the champion!  I'M the championn!  Respect me!  Respect Zerlina!  holds up the belt
Referees: come out to check on Aleister
Cien: heads to the back, holding the belt up at the apex of the ramp one more time before leaving
Aleister: ugh

SAnitY: comes out for the other semifinal
BruiserStrong: provide the opposition
Both Teams: threaten to have this break down into a Pier 4 a couple of times early
Drake: Come on, guys, don't make me break out the staple gun.
SAnitY: gain the advantage
BruiserStrong: take it back
Wolfe & Strong: get tagged in and throw hands
Full Sailors: cheer increasingly louder
Wolfe: Let me give to you the suplex of my people!  DVD!
Strong: Kickout!
SAnitY: Eurocut wheelbarrow!
Dunne: save
EY: takes him out Savage elbow!
Strong: kicks out, then lands some kicks from his back Half nelson backbreaker!
Wolfe: Save!
Dunne: blind tags back in
BruiserStrong: Cloud Bitter End!
Referee: Winners!
BruiserStrong: reluctantly fist bump

Kathy Kelley: Mr. Regal, who is the last entrant for the North American title match in New Orleans?
Master Regal: Actually, I have just finalized this participant.  Let me retrieve this man, since he's in my office.
A Couple Beats Later: a young me emerges from the office
Full Sailors: huge pop
TheKing: I'll see you at Takeover.  smiles
Full Sailors: Rick O'Shea!  Rick O'Shea!  Rick O'Shea!  Rick O'Shea!
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The Wrestling Blog's OFFICIAL Best in the World Rankings for April 2, 2018

April 2, 2018, 4:00 pm
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Bryan's return date is OFFICIAL
Photo 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. Daniel Bryan (Last Week: 1) - Bryan's comeback finally feels completely real as his WrestleMania match is set. He'll team with Shane McMahon against Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens, and while most people are speculating as to whether or not Bryan will turn heel (lmao, as if Zayn and Owens are the real heels here), I'm speculating if McMahon's diverticulitis will be okay enough for him to wrestle by then. I'd love to see someone turn on Bryan to lift him away from this bullshit story.

2. Joel Embiid (Last Week: 4) - Okay, so Embiid didn't really make much of an impact on the court after Markelle Fultz headbutted him onto the injured list. Que sera sera. Still, he's been active on social media, where he's always been an all-star, and he'll be back in time for the playoffs. WEARING A MASK. Are you ready for Masked Embiid to join Ben Simmons and company in leading the Sixers to perhaps playoff series victories? I've been waiting my whole life for it, at least since the Super Bowl.

3. Ham (Last Week: Not Ranked)OFFICIAL HOLZERMAN HUNGERS SPONSORED ENTRY - I like turkey on Thanksgiving and stuff, but honestly, Easter makes out like a bandit getting ham as its designated meat. Seriously, it's versatile and hard to really fuck up unless you're really bad at cooking, and it's also got a higher floor and ceiling for flavor.

4. Asuka (Last Week: 3) - Honestly, Jamie Frost didn't stand a chance.

5. Minoru Suzuki (Last Week: 5) - In all honesty, Tetsuya Naito probably is a piece of shit, but he's one that everyone loves. However, when Suzuki calls you a piece of shit and then starts throwing furniture after you diss him, well, I think it's time to start making funeral arrangements.

6. Braun Strowman (Last Week: 6) - The tension is killing me as to whom Strowman is going to pick for his tag team partner. Hopefully, he just says "fuck it" and picks Alexa Bliss, because WWE should be dragged into the 21st century kicking and screaming.

7. Arike Ogunbowale (Last Week: Not Ranked) - The Connecticut women's basketball team steamrolled the regular season and Women's March Madness up until the national semifinals, when the team ran into Notre Dame. Far be it from me to celebrate the Fighting Irish and its overexposed sports legacy, but to be fair, Ogunbowale's last second shot in overtime to sink the Huskies and send her team to the finals was the very definition of the word onions, at least in a basketball sense. I can respect that regardless of how tired the rest of the country is of Notre Dame athletics.

8. Meiko Satomura (Last Week: Not Ranked) - She went to Fight Club Pro and immediately kicked the shit out of Chris Brookes to win its top title. The thing is, few people were surprised at it, and in fact, if she had left England without that hardware, the reaction would've been ghastly. When you're an over-20 year pro who just rakes everywhere you go, you get to do Grown Person Shit like that. Also, Pete Dunne has got a receipt coming to him.

9. Shohei Ohtani (Last Week: Not Ranked) - Baseball is back. Hooray baseball! Ohtani is going to be the most watched player as he'll try to be the first person to do the whole pitcher AND position player thing (even if that position is designated hitter) in the Majors since who knows when. While he's started slow at the plate so far, his pitching debut yesterday went well. He hit 100 mph on the radar gun, and his breaking stuff broke. If he can do big things this year, then who knows, maybe he and Mike Trout can somehow deliver the Angels to contention in a loaded American League West.

10. Oney Lorcan (Last Week: 10) - The Lorcan Bunny went to everyone's houses and gave them porkin' (provided they were of age and consented).
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WrestleMania Will Be Seven Hours Long, and That's Okay

April 3, 2018, 9:15 am
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Seven hours of Mania (sponsored by Snickers!) isn't too much if you time out your WWE viewing
Graphics Credit: WWE.com
Last year's WrestleMania (technically 33 but unofficially "WrestleMania: The Big Bright Florida Sun") was the longest ever. The pre-show started at 5 PM local time, and then The Undertaker was swallowed up by the ramp just around midnight. That is seven hours. Seven damn hours. And with 13 matches announced for WrestleMania 34 (unofficially "WrestleMania: Also The New Orleans Saints"), the same number as last year's Mania, we are likely in for just as long of a haul.

The glut of content produced by WWE is a perpetual source of hand-wringing. We complain that WWE is asking for too large of a slice of our lives to be devoted to watching their stuff. The trick is to just not watch very much of it. I haven't watched a full episode of RAW or Smackdown in well over a year, and folks, I am doing just fine. I watch most of the PPVs, I catch a video package here and there, and I'm good to go. Maybe I miss out on the little character quirks that pop up throughout the weeks, but I read enough recaps and analysis that I have a good enough idea of what's going on.

But I will watch every minute of WrestleMania and I will be more than happy to do it.

The first reason is that I, like many of you, am a creature of habit and I don't really know how to do anything else but watch every WrestleMania that will be produced until the end of time. Even if I pull the trigger and cancel my WWE Network subscription, I'll still pop in every April and see what Vince McMahon has to offer.

But I will sit through all seven hours and enjoy it because, for better or worse, WrestleMania has become the WWE's State of the Union address: eagerly anticipated, overly long, often dull, but intermittently explosive and memorable.

It has become this way by necessity. WWE has so much content, therefore they have so many performers, that in order to accurately show you what they can do, they have to get everyone out there. Yes, there are 13 matches and in advance, that feels like it will be an eternity. But what are they supposed to do, cut a couple matches? Get rid of the battle royals completely? If they did that, we all would pitch a fit about so and so being left off the card due to time restraints. "Heath Slater is shunned again, and for what?? When will they ever do right by him??" You've heard it all before.

WWE is avoiding this problem not just because they don't want to give the raging mob more fuel for their torches. As crooked of a company WWE may be, they do seem to believe in the principle of putting as many people as possible on the WrestleMania card. The performers get a payday, and they get a show of respect for being with the company. Yes, it results in an incredibly long show, but hey, it's not going to harm our lives by having to watch Randy Orton, Bobby Roode and Jinder Mahal mope around the ring, especially since Rusev will crush them all and make us smile.

And ultimately, we should remember that the seven hours of WrestleMania will pass through us like so much of the content we consume in 2018. Albums come and go in the blink of an eye. We binge-watch a TV show and then never think about it again. So if we watch seven hours of Wrestlemania, and we only remember like five or six good moments from it, it won't be a huge departure from how we normally live our lives — as fickle zombies excited by momentary bouts of euphoria, distracting ourselves from inevitable death and destruction caused by the forces of money and power.

Happy WrestleMania-watching, everyone!
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Pro Wrestling SKOOPZ on The Wrestling Blog: Vol. 4, Issue 13

April 4, 2018, 1:15 pm
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WILL TAKER SHOW UP AT MANIA?
Photo Credit: WWE.com
It's the biggest week in wrestling. WrestleMania week? NO. WrestleMania is RUN BY MARKS, WORKED BY MARKS, and ATTENDED BY THE BIGGEST MARKS OF THEM ALL. This week is WRESTLEMANIA NEWS WEEK from your main source for ALL the biggest scoops, HORB FLERBMINBER. Oh, you thought you could escape me, COULD YOU? Well, you're WRONG! I'm here to feed you the news whether you like it or not, like old-timey parents used to feed their belligerent children castor oil. I SAW IT ON TOM AND JERRY ONCE, SO IT HAS TO BE TRUE. Do you think Bryan Alvarez has the same dedication to giving you what you need? HELL NO, he's too busy trying to pass off WCW Saturday Night recaps from 1994 as current events. I'M ONTO YOU, DICK BOY.

Of course, you COULD just read the newsletter, but that'd be like going to an orgy and just sticking your pinky finger in someone's asshole, WITH THEIR CONSENT, OF COURSE. Unlike some professional wrestling journalists, HORB FLERBMINBER ALWAYS PREACHES CONSENT AND WANTS TO MAKE SURE EVERY SEXUAL ENCOUNTER IS JUST AS CONSENSUALLY DISAPPOINTING FOR THEM AS IT IS FOR YOU. Anyway, you want THE WHOLE EXPERIENCE. ALL ORIFICES, ALL PROTRUSIONS, ALL ACTIONS. And to do that, you'll have to follow me on Twitter. Well, my Twitter isn't like a REAL orgy, but it is an ORGY OF INFORMATION FOR YOUR EYES AND ALSO YOUR NOSE FOR SOME REASON. They let me test out the scratch-n-sniff beta. Anyway, follow @HorbFlerbminber, and you'll find out which wrestling journalist is horny on main right now. Sometimes, it's surprisingly not Jim Ross! Also, order and catch up on some of the best of my prior issues of the newsletter. This week's special is all about WrestleMania! Get these issues today!
  • March 15, 44 BC - Julius Caesar buried at WrestleMania Negative MMXXVIII when The Conspirators, led by his former tag partner Brutus, repeatedly hit him with Backstabbers
  • April 3, 1985 - Complete analysis of the first WrestleMania, including and why Mr. T competing at the event is an anomaly that will certainly not foreshadow how WWE books celebrities in coming megacards
  • April 7, 1993 - How Hulk Hogan interrupting the celebration of a Samoan pretending to be Japanese means he's probably going to say something really racist 20 years in the future after fucking his best friend's wife on video
  • March 17, 2004 - Beautiful photography of Eddie Guerrero hugging absolutely no one at the end of the show under a shower of confetti
  • April 5, 2006 - How Mickie James' lesbian stalker angle against Trish Stratus shows WWE is at the vanguard of LGBTQ rights in entertainment
How can you read all these issues and more? Well, come find my merch table at Joey Janela's Spring Break 2. I'll be the guy with the TV tray trying to get Pierre Carl Oulette's attention so he'll give me his hookup for Clenbuterol. And now, the news!

- Undertaker still hasn't responded to John Cena's challenge for a match at WrestleMania. Sources say Taker is too busy cutting promos on the Parkland shooting survivors and being retroactively mad at anyone who took a knee during the anthem during the last National Football League season. He's expected to answer Cena sometime in June.

- WrestleMania 34 is being slotted for 168 total hours on WWE Network. It's already started. Get home, you're going to miss the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royale if you don't.

- RAW REPORT: lol you think something happened on the RAW before Mania?

- SMACKDOWN REPORT: I haven't watched Smackdown in years. What makes you think I'm gonna start now?

- Paul "Triple H" Levesque unveiled the NXT North American Championship, which is just a picture of him pedigreeing the nations of Canada and Mexico engraved in gold on a belt made of red, white, and blue dyed leather.

- The Miz and Asuka won the Mixed Match Challenge. Their prize is now a forced romance angle that will try to break up Miz and his wife Maryse so that Vince McMahon can horn in on the action.

- Miz appeared on RAW days after Maryse gave birth to their first child, a daughter named Monroe Sky, because according to Vince McMahon, paternity leave is for cowards and wastrels, something he said while holding the remote control for the poison gas release into his wife's and new daughter's hospital room.

- Daniel Bryan, Braun Strowman, and three other superstars have been announced for the Greatest Royal Rumble. Sources say the winner of the biggest battle royale in WWE history will point at the "No Girls Allowed" sign hanging over the crowd.

- WWE released cards for its live Axxess shows, featuring indie talent on the shows. However, they will not be wrestling, as they will be reading their entries in the WWE-sponsored essay competition, "Why Roman Reigns is better than me and all my peers."

- Kazuchika Okada will defend his IWGP World Championship against Hiroshi Tanahashi at Wrestling Dontaku, because, sources say, Gedo really likes fucking with people.

- Will Ospreay will be working WrestleMania this weekend despite having his foot lodged so far in his mouth the tips of his shoes are being dissolved in stomach acid as we speak.

- Maria Kanellis gave birth to hers and Mike Bennett's first child, a girl named Fredrica Moon Bennett. She's already blocked half of Wrestling Twitter.

- Jeff Jarrett stopped by Smackdown's backstage to reunite with AJ Styles. He brought along Claire Lynch in a move that surprised everyone, Lynch herself included.

- The Big Show re-signed a multi-year contract with WWE that will allow him to break Lex Luger's all-time record for combined heel and face turns.

- Hulk Hogan responded to Mark Henry's exhortation that he apologize to all Black wrestlers by saying he needed to apologize to "all wrestlers," not just the Black ones. From out of nowhere, a group of White moms and uncles on Facebook just started applauding him.

- Meanwhile, Hogan lost out on inducting Hillbilly Jim into the WWE Hall of Fame to Jimmy Hart. However, expect WWE to make it up to him by inserting him in the main event of WrestleMania and pinning Brock Lesnar clean in the middle of the ring.

- Vader on his open heart surgery "I'm in pain, but I'm thankful I'm alive. First thing I do when I get out of the hospital is beat the holy fuck out of Will Ospreay."

Last week's poll results are in, and 79 percent of you disapprove of Donald Trump's job so far as a WWE Hall of Famer. That has to be a stunning blow to him and his ego. This week:
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Search

Twitter Request Line, Vol. 230

April 5, 2018, 12:40 pm
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Whomst will Strowman's partner be?
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:

Honestly, Booch has always been aloof. Skylin is definitely more of an outgoing personality, and Colton Burpo loves to engage with outgoing personalities.

I am so, so sorry everyone.

Protected user @AGoot18 asks:
Are you going to be Braun's partner?
Unfortunately, I'm a giant coward and hate getting hit, even fake, so I wouldn't want even the remote chance of having to be on the business end of a Brogue Kick/Knee or a European uppercut. Strowman can do the damn thing himself, which is why I could be his partner, just as everyone else in the world could. However, again, I'm a giant throbbing dingus. Now, who will be Strowman's partner? I have no real leads on it, to be honest. My gut is telling me it'll be Elias, because it'd be an ironic callback to their feud before and after Elimination Chamber. The fatalist in me thinks it will be either Kane (terrible) or Big Show (not as terrible, possibly even good but still). Bray Wyatt is a possibility depending on if Vince McMahon really gets the purpose of the Lake of Reincarnation or not. I've heard rumblings of certain legends coming back like Rey Mysterio, which would rule but make absolutely no sense at all. Personally, if I were picking, I would debut Kassius Ohno in the spot, have him turn almost IMMEDIATELY to become The Bar's insurance policy, and then let the three become a stable whether or not they win the match or not just so Cesaro has a fallback option for the sad inevitability that Sheamus has to retire due to spinal stenosis.

I will never stop beating the Kings of Wrestling on the WWE main roster drum, by the way, so don't even try to dissuade me.

The truth is I've never not wanted to get a Switch, but the combination of two mortgages and lack of time prevented me. Now that the family is unencumbered of the old house, a Switch is a definite possibility, but the question is when? I'd say maybe Christmas as a big present for the kids *wink wink nudge nudge*. I think one big thing would cajole me to get one as soon as I could though, and that would be a Pokémon game on there, not a satellite game, but a canon generational JRPG. I love Zelda and Mario, and if/when I get one, those games will be on my list. But it feels like the only gaming brand loyalty I have anymore is to those goddamn Pocket Monsters. If/when Gen 8 is announced for the Switch, I am so goddamn there. SO GODDAMN THERE, TREY, YOU HEAR ME?

I haven't had people over for Mania in years. One time, my wife made a ham, which kinda ruled. Nowadays, should I throw the hypothetical Mania party, I would probably do the ultimate party food setup. That's right, a nacho bar. However, it wouldn't be just any nacho bar. See, I have a smoker, and I would smoke some dang meat. Depending on finances, the protein would either be a pork shoulder or a beef brisket. Next would be homemade queso, made with queso fresco if I'm feeling fancy or just a bag of the taco mix from ShopRite if not. I'd make my famous homemade salsa, put out some pickled jalapenos, fresh cilantro, black beans, guacamole, and chopped onions. They would all be in separate containers so you could choose what or what not to put on your chips. Beverages would be varied, probably bottled water, whatever beer I had in the house, and maybe some soda. Perhaps I'd put out other snacks too, but the nacho bar would be the main event.

Honestly, you and I probably agree that another Undertaker match would be an awful idea. However, indie wrestler Super Beetle posited this idea on Twitter. Basically, Taker comes out, tells Cena he's retired, but sics his successor on him, Aleister Black. Of course, this idea is pending that Black loses his NXT Championship match from the night before to Andrade "Cien" Almas (I'm not opposed to it at all), and that Cena would be willing to put over someone right from NXT. Then again, he did the same for Kevin Owens. Something is going to happen at Mania. Whether it be an actual match, a confrontation, or Taker using a proxy, that month of build will come to a head. I just hope I don't have to watch an aching old man die in the ring to pay it off, y'know?

Protected user @adamsgroove asks:
Biggest surprise at WrestleMania that nobody saw coming, or the biggest thing that should happen but won't?
For the first thing, the one thing I can see coming that may not have been on the forefront of people's minds is Carmella cashing in her briefcase... on the Alexa Bliss/Nia Jax winner. I'm not sure her contract is brand exclusive, or if it is, that it wouldn't be changed on the fly. The only way that it happens to the Smackdown Champion is if WWE decides New Orleans is the place where streaks come to die. In the grand tradition of Undertaker losing his Mania streak four years ago, Brian James, Vince McMahon, whoever is making that call might want to build the venue up rather than the wrestler. I'm not a fan of undefeated streaks anyway, so I'm not sure it'd bother me, but the question then becomes who the person ending Asuka's streak would be, Charlotte Flair or Carmella? Either way, Carmella walking out with a Women's Championship doesn't feel like it's on the table for most people, but it's something that I think has a good chance of happening.

As for the biggest thing that should happen but won't would be last-minute rearranging the match order so that Cedric Alexander and Mustafa Ali got to work the main show and one of the other matches, either the US Championship or the Smackdown Tag Title bouts, get bumped to the pre-show. It's not a matter of who deserves what, because in wrestling, no one really "deserves" anything in most cases, and if you're talking about underappreciated talent, you're talking moving Rusev or the Bludgeon Bros. to the preshow, or taking a hot act like Bobby Roode, the Usos, or New Day and putting them on the preshow. That being said, WWE has this cruiserweight brand it's trying to push, and you don't do that by putting its showcase match in a slot where like a quarter of the eyes possible are going to see it. The US and Smackdown Tag Titles are what they are. WWE already alienated two high-profile cruiserweight competitors and are building from scratch at this point. It should be putting the two guys who are going to be the top babyfaces of that division in a spotlight to show a hot crowd "Hey, these two are just a sampling of a reason why you should be subscribing all year long to WWE Network." But it won't happen for reasons. *sigh*

Sorry, I can't do all singles matches. Chronological order here:
  • "Macho Man" Randy Savage vs. Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat, WrestleMania III - A lot of people have fallen out of love with the OG prestige Mania match, but honestly, I think it holds up. Savage, Steamboat, George Steele, and Miss Elizabeth put on a storytelling masterpiece, and Steamboat winning was super cathartic.
  • Bret "the Hitman" Hart vs. "Rowdy" Roddy Piper, WrestleMania VIII - I'm not sure Piper meant to bleed (or maybe he did? I don't know the legend), but it certainly added a bit of an edge to the match, which stood out as a great undercard match on an early Mania between two of the best storytellers in the biz for different reasons.
  • Shawn Michaels vs. Razor Ramon, Ladder Match, WrestleMania X - I mean, c'mon, it's the original prestige spotfest. I love that shit.
  • Daniel Bryan vs. Wade Barrett vs. Luke Harper vs. Stardust vs. Dean Ambrose vs. R-Truth vs. Dolph Ziggler, Ladder Match, WrestleMania 31 - Am I copping out here? No, because this match was supremely enjoyable for what it was. Obviously, looking back, it probably contributed to Bryan's two-year absence though, but still, at the time, it was what the kids call a hoot.
  • Zack Ryder vs. Sin Cara vs. Kevin Owens vs. Sami Zayn vs. The Miz vs. Dolph Ziggler vs. Stardust, Ladder Match, WrestleMania 32 - I like the ladder matches, eh? Anyway, this match was almost as memorable as the one the year before. Again, lots of car crash bumps, big swinging mood, and a super-surprising and satisfying finish.

While I hope that never happens, WWE loves to make things bigger as a way of making them better. I don't know if it's inevitable, but the thought has to have crossed Vince McMahon's mind at least once. Anything to squeeze more money out of the rubes who go every year to spend it, right?

Protected user @Heinekenrana asks:
If given an unlimited budget and roster meeting the 205 lbs and under criteria, including women/NB talent: how would you book 205 live? How would you handle PPVs, etc.?
Honestly, the only thing that I would change about 205 Live given the parameters of the question is that I would absolutely add in more non-male talent to compete. Other than that, the show feels perfect as it is. It is, as @tapemachines on Twitter said, an old-school show with modern sensibilities with some of the best ringwork and promos in the company right now. Which female talent would I add? Honestly, my first pick would be Kairi Sane, because she's probably got the best sort of working style to fit in, and she's sort of lost in the shuffle otherwise. Make a big deal out of her breaking the gender barrier and whatnot. Second would be doing whatever it took to bring up Princesa Sugehit for more lucha flair. I'd try to bring Kay Lee Ray over from the UK as well. Finally, if I had to do one thing to bring in or in this case bring BACK a male superstar, it would be to do whatever it took to smooth things over with Neville to bring him back. It's not a complicated plan, but I think those additions would really solidify an incredibly diverse and talented roster.

I mean, you answered my question for me. Fred Yehi dropping off the WWN roster to go globetrotting had some dire timing because he's not gonna be on any of their New Orleans cards. Furthermore, every promotion down there made a mistake in not booking him. I mean, every other name guy is going to be on at least one show: Daisuke Sekimoto, Nick Gage, Toni Storm, Pierre Carl Ouellette, Munenori Sawa, Rush, the Lucha Bros.... I could go on for quite a bit. The fact that Yehi isn't gonna be there feels criminal. CRIMINAL I SAY.

He's definitely a face, but less a wrestling face and more one of those hard-luck movie protagonists who starts out with the world against his ne'er-do-well ass before pulling it all together towards the end. If I were booking it, I'd have the Phillies hovering around like .400 at the All-Star Break before Kapler has a revelation in the film room about how to best utilize his lineup and then has a heart-to-heart with a lovable mentor whom the people haven't meant yet about him not just trusting analytics but also his players. The turning point comes when Aaron Nola is about to face off against a hitter who's raked him all his career, but he's at like 75 pitches in the 5th inning of an otherwise smooth game. He has the impulse to lift him, but remembers what the mentor says and keeps him in. He gets the out. The Phillies go on a tear and make the playoffs. Kapler goes from zero to hero. In a perfect world, that's the story. But the world's not perfect, so who knows.
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NXT QnD

April 6, 2018, 9:15 am
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Reporters cry, producers die...
Photo Credit: WWE.com
  • Bobby Fish was officially written out of NXTV with an injury.  Unspecified on air since it's been only recently revealed is that the injury might keep him out until the winter.

  • The Undisputed Era's Kyle O'Reilly and Adam Cole, BAY BAY ran in on what were to be the Dusty Classic finals between Pete Dunne/Roderick Strong and the Authors of Pain; as a result, William Regal made a triple threat match for both the Cup and the NXT World Tag Team Championships. The Era would complain about this later on to no avail.
  • In advance of their match to be taped in the preshow of New Orleans tomorrow but aired next week as part of the usual leftovers show, Lacey Evans spent some time running down the entire division and her opponent, Kairi Sane, made relatively short work of Vanessa Borne.
  • The promised hoss fight between Lars Sullivan and Killian Dain went to a ... let's say no contest when every other participant in the North American title ladder match showed up.  There was no physical interaction at all; they all just came to the ring and looked at the others.
Hype Videos!




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Best Coast Bias: Brace Yourself

April 9, 2018, 7:00 am
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Get ready, you mutha***** for the big payback
Photo Credit: WWE.com
Results, stray thoughts, and takeaways from NXT's three-hour special from the Big Easy just as soon as I can finally relax when the credits box pops up...

Results:
  • Adam Cole beat Ricochet, ECIII, Lars Sullivan, Killian Dainand Velveteen Dream in a ladder match to become NXT's first-ever North American Champion.
  • Shayna Baszler became the seventh woman to win the NXT Women's World Championship after Ember Moon passed out in the Kirifuda Clutch.
  • The Undisputed Era's Adam Cole and Kyle O'Reilly retained the NXT World Tag Team Championships over the Authors of Pain and Roderick Strong and Pete Dunne in a triple threat match when Strong turned on Dunne, allowing Kyle O'Reilly to gain the fall.
  • Appropriately enough, Aleister Black became the 13th different man to win the NXT World Championship by beating Andrade "Cien" Almas via pinfall after a second Black Mass.
  • Johnny Gargano used a brace-enhanced STF to beat Tommaso Ciampa and regain his NXT employment.

General Observations:
  • One of the bands charged with providing one of the themes did so to open the showlive in the arena while the opening video played on the Tron (Ed. Note — That band was Cane Hill. TH).  Crowd was into it live and I let the kids have their fun, but if one more of their gdamned footballs lands ON MY PROPERTY, Edna, I swear to Christ
  • Every one of the participants in the ladder match got a pop (Ricochet's was largest and saved for last) except for Lars Sullivan, and it was pretty cool that he got something close to respectful murmurs of vague foreboding instead of the rapturous reception given the likes of the King or ADAM COLE, BAY BAY!
  • Had to get it out of the way early.  This show was not here to play with y'all.
  • Liked the thruline of Killain and Lars' unfinished business from Wednesday playing out through the match.  
  • Ricochet welcomed himself to the unfamiliar with a step up springboard Shooting Star Press that got a "hoshit" out of me even before the replay showed he almost overshot it/the victims were closer to the ring than they needed to be given how much Young Me can actually fly.
  • Dain landed a tope on Lars. Reread that if you need to.
  • Fun spot early where it took Ricochet starting a powerbomb, followed in succession by Dream and EC3 helping with Adam Cole providing the finishing touches from the other side of the ladder to get Lars off of it.
  • Ricochet took a back body drop onto a ladder placed diagonally in the corner that might not have even been one of the top 50 crazy-ass bumps of the night.
  • The short-lived 3AC alliance was broken up with an "EC3, BAY BAY!".  Cole responded by oshigoroshi-ing Not Ethan Anymore into a ladder, then serving up superkicks to the other four competitors to increasing applause including merking a springboarding Ricochet for the last one to culminate in a standing O and the real deal catchphrase.
  • Then Dream got his turn to shine, hitting his Purple Rainmaker on Dain, then Cole, an enzui one on Ricochet, and one off a ladder on Lars.
  • You know a move's impressive when Mauro ends up doing his Joey Styles impersonation and not hitting his own catchphrase.  That'd be later(ish).
  • EC3 cut Dream off and powerbombed him onto that corner diagonal ladder for some deserved chants of his own, and that was before he TKOed Cole off the ladder.
  • The price he paid for succeeding briefly was Dain Wastelanding him (bad) before getting a ladder thrown on him (even worse) and then getting that ladder sentoned into him (yeeeouch).  
  • Cole jumped on KD's back to prevent a Vader Bomb onto 3 into the ladder.  He failed and went flying on impact as a result that spawned the evening's first This Is Awesome chant.  
  • The hoss fight tried to resume.  Ricochet probably wishes he just let it happened instead of interjecting, since they proceeded to play Biel That Former Puma for a couple minutes afterwards.
  • Lars caught the Divide. Again, reread that again.  
  • Ricochet stunned him and managed to climb, then Lars tipped the ladder with authority.  Not that it mattered, since Ricochet used that to hit an unspeakably swank moonsault to Dain and Cole on the outside; our first Holy Shit! chant happened as a result of that, and rightfully so.
  • Ricochet floored EC3 into a ladder, then Shooting Star Pressed him into the ladder.
  • There was a ladder bridge between what was at that point the main ladder and the corner, and the crowd fired up a classic Please Don't Die chant that was fully earned and paid off when Dream hit his rolling DVD onto Ricochet into that bridge and it didn't give.  YEEEEOUCH.  I'm flinching just remembering it.
  • Did I mention YEEEEOUCHing and flinching?  Because in short order after that, Dream ended up on a ladder bridge between the announce table and the apron, then Lars Freak Accidented EC3 into him and through it.  To quote my notes verbatim, fucksakes, dudes!
  • Our second Holy Shit! and This Is Awesome! chants of the night/this match.  At this point it almost felt like "...there's going to be four more matches after this?"
  • To continue the mirroring hoss fight secondary story, Dain did the same on the same side of the ring into another bridge with a combination Michinoku Driver and seated senton splash to wipe out Cole and Ricochet.
  • NXT chants.  Fight Forever chants.  If the Network was just this match for $10 a month, I would pay it.  So would a few thousand others.  Possibly a few hundred thousand others.  Maybe a couple milli?
  • Six men, three ladders, everybody up!
  • Cole side Russianed ECIII off a ladder to get us down to four.
  • Ricochet hit a superduper neckbreaker off another one to get us down to the hosses.
  • A Freak Accident off the final ladder that legitimately came within a couple of inches of possibly decapitating Dain with the top rope got us down to none.  The crowd gave that a wide burat of applause, then booed when it looked like Sullivan was going to claim the belt.
  • Ricochet springboarded in and got on Sullivan's back, which sent them teetering down and into some of the other ladders.  It looked like the plan was to have Ricochet on Sullivan's back with Sullivan still climbing, but it just didn't happen.
  • What did happen was Ricochet recovered first and climbed up, only to be deposed and sent down at the hands of our first North American champion — Mr. Adam Cole (BAY BAY).
  • You knew Ember Moon was probably boned in the rematch when Lzzy Hale (lookin' like Yung Joan Jett over here) played her out to the ring.
  • Ronda Rousey and Jessamyn Duke of the other Horsewomen were dans la maison.
  • The ONE FALL! pause is back, as it should be.
  • Shayna Baszler dodging the single leg dropkick at the bell and smirking afterwards is the perfect snapshot of her character.  In a similar note that would soon follow up and parallel it, Ember busted out a flying second rope Codebreaker that she made look easier than falling out of bed or in love with Mama Bliss.
  • Enmity.  Delicious enmity.  Ember hanging on for four after Shayna got under the ropes while in a crossface just days after castigating the QoS for not conducting herself the way a champion should.
  • Baszler got the advantage and even her signature Clutch.  Moon at first avoided it, then fell prey to it before launching herself full body into the corner and the middle of the ring to break it to applause.
  • First of all, my apologies to the former Evie for turning her new sobriquet into a pejorative.  Second of all, I need a shorthanded relatable way to describe something, so I'm going to do it. Baszler tried to Dakota Kai Ember, but Ember regained the advantage and actually did the deed.
  • Baszler regained the upper hand, then relocated her dislocated shoulder by ramming it and herself into the post a couple of times.  The announce did a really good job of blending their disbelief while also providing analysis on what she was going for, since it's not a standing wrestling trope that can be seen and doesn't need to be explained.
  • A great sequence followed up, where Ember hit her first ever Eclipse Suicida (probably the most glaring example of mal camerawork all night), then Shayna got the Kurifida back on before Ember broke it by targeting the arm that she'd Kai'd up and that gave her the opening to land a powering out powerbomb.  
  • Shame on me for not realizing until this match actually started that the Eclipse put Ember in perfect position to get Kurifida'ed, and I thought it was going to be the finish here.  I failed to allot how much fighting off Ember was going to get to do, or the nice subtle note immediately punched by Nigel on commentary that with her arm damaged Baszler was literally grabbing onto her own hair to reinforce the hold, but after about a minute and a half of struggling up to and including a one second pinfall, the former War Goddess went limp.  Long reign the Queen. (?)
  • You could tell things were serious in the Era's camp when Cole sucked it up to defend the belts and Kyle didn't air guitar his way down to the ring.
  • Cole got wiped out early with an Authorized double powerbomb through the Spanish announce table.  It's a long way from FCW days if NXT's got a SAT for bumps (and also, presumably, commentary).
  • O'Reilly immediately went into superhero mode, at one point triangulating Roddy and then catching the unsuspecting Akam in an anklelock at the same time.  Rezar made the save by powerbombing the Bruiserweight into the double submission, then the Auters proceeded to whale on Roddy for quite some time.
  • Pete got the hottest of tags and started unloading, but the Authors got the Super Collider and the Last Chapter — with Roddy making a save on Kyle to prolong the match.  Hmm.  A receipt shortly followed with Akam saving the match on BruiserStrong's Cloud Bitter End.  
  • Dunne got the Bitter End on Kyle... then Roddy turned on him and laid him out with the End of Heartache.
  • So the team that wasn't in the tournament won the tournament, thanks with help from a guy who was fighting them until almost literally the moment he turned and stopped trying to win the tag team titles so he could...win the tag team titles?  Per my friend Jarrod, I'm not a fan of the late match turn if someone is going to be fighting what are his ostensible teammates the entire time, but a) this ending is clearly precipitated by the seriousness of Fish's injury and 2) it's going to be really interesting to see if Roddy's inclusion turns Bobby into a vestigial tail to be cut off.
  • Victory thus assured, the Stronger Undisputed Era posed by the Cup and Kyle felt good enough to air guitar about it.
  • Newly minted superface Peter Dunne had a Very Intriguing Reaction to this turn of events.
  • Another appearance of the La Sombra mask as our Ingobernale campeon sauntered out.
  • Really liked announce pushing the fact this match had happened almost a year to the day previous and imputing Cien's leveling up over that time period due to Zelina's taking him on as a charge.
  • Black started the match succeeding where Ember had failed, sort of botched his springboard feint after a strike party of offense, but snugly nailed an Asai to the floor then stared down Zelina Vega as if to say "I wouldn't try it."  Cien was in enough trouble in the opening five that she managed to successfully do so a couple beats later by ranaing Aleister into the stairs to allow Cien to gain the advantage.
  • The champ was firmly in control until he got into a striking tradeoff.  El Idolo is many things; a dude who can beat Black in that environment, he ain't.  That said, he recovered enough to land a snap German after missing his corner Meteora and follow up that successful suplex with his rolling, always crazily fluid moonsault for a near fall.
  • Cien seemed to take Black's head off with a rolling back elbow that Black kicked out of at one, yelled at him and then really upped the level of violence with a bicycle knee for a nearfall.  If he already didn't have a kickass strike as a Finisher of Certain Doom, that bike knee would be it.
  • Simultaneous forearms, slaps to the face, then front kicks to applause, NXT and This Is Awesome chants.  It would get awesomer: Cien's hiptoss into the corner might've been the most underrated move of the show, Aleister caught and blocked the corner Meteora, then Cien not only shoved Aleister to the floor when he tried (presumably) another quebrada but followed it up with a springboard tornillo and landed on his feet.  That was never going to end the match, but I would've been fine with it doing so just for the levels of swag on that alone.
  • Oh, Zelina, you sexy, evil genius: grabbing the belt so that the referee would stop Cien from using it while giving you the window to give Black the basement rana driver.  Black sold this like an exclamation point but managed to recover and drill Black Mass...only for Zelina to get his foot on the ropes.  
  • Cien landed the same double stomp to the apron he landed on Johnny in their Philly fight, then followed it up by finally landing the corner Meteora.
  • Black countered the Headaches but Cien snuffed out another Mass with a huge enzui dropkick.  Solid .7 Okada.  
  • Cien also landed the apron Meteora he landed on Johnathon Grapples in Philadelphia and caught Black coming into the ring with the 100 Headaches coming in — another kickout.
  • Zelina flew off to go after Black in full sight of the referee this time, but he ducked, and Cien caught her, thus leaving the entirety of his head open and a Black Mass slammed his title reign shut.
  • It was a big babyface moment by all means, but something about Aleister celebrating like someone who could experience joy and happiness, even over winning the Big X is something that looked off-kilter but still nice.
  • Cien and Zelina may very well be on the main roster by the time you read this.
  • Usually when a babyface wins the big championship on a big show, I'd be very adamant that that should be the show closer unless you got something world-ending to close things out in its place.  #DIY imploding is Yassin Beyinitely one of those things.
  • Tomasshole came out to no music and nobody loved him, not even Jesus.  Asshole chants, You Suck chants, most noticeable and lengthy Fuck You, Ciampa ones as well.  
  • Since they layed out for the entirety of the crowd's wholly earned rancor, I would love to hear what was the announce table's (especially Percy's) reaction to being that close to the possibility of the first white man to be lynched in New Orleans' history.
  • Ciampa responded to the pre-match Johnny Wrestling chants by aping Gargano's corner entrance pose, and struck the Come At Me, Bro as Johnny came marching down to the ring.
  • Bell rings amid a downpour of "Fuck him up, Johnny, fuck him up!"clap clap chants.  Have fun editing this one, God's Production Team!
  • I suppose this match couldn't've technically ended in six seconds with Johnny shooting him to death, so fine, let's have a match.
  • Smilin' Drake was the only referee on the imprint's roster who could've refereed this match that didn't happen, and he even got in all UFC black to do so.
  • ♪It's the most hold harmless time of the yeeeeeeaaaarrrrrrr! ♪
  • Johnny won the initial flurry, and then got to stomp the crap out of his former bestie for close to half a minute since the match had no rules.  Drake didn't even bother trying to stop it.  Serotonin dump: achieved.
  • The camera didn't linger on it, but Shane and his kids were in the front row and they were cheering Johnny on loudly.  There's still a little bit of hope for the future.
  • Gargano dove over the barrier and laid out Ciampa, but Ciampa turned the tables and got the upper hand before eventually pulling up the padding ringside.  
  • Literally everything he did got booed.  He almost got booed for moving.  If he had yelled out "I love air!" the crowd would've died three to six minutes later out of spite.
  • Johnny landed a superkick and threw Tomasshole into the announcers, thus leading to a hilarious moment where the crowd chanted MAMMA MIA! in lieu of the temporarily waylaid Mauro.
  • Nigel further bolstered his standing by dropping a five star Oscar Wilde quote "A true friend will always stab you in the front" before Tommaso sort of superplexed himself and Johnny to the floor from the table.   He followed that up with a back suplex into the table facade and it did not give, spurring another round of FU Ciampa and Asshole chants. His response was to applaud for himself and pat himself on the back a la Barry Horowitz with an overly fake smile before going back into Tomasshole mode.
  • Enough Brits showed up to form a solid You're A Wanker chant in response.
  • Said wanker then proceeded to take the crutches off of a Johnny Wrestling fanplant, thus unofficially kicking off Act II.  Or maybe the creepy wave goodbye with a crutch in his hand afterwards kicked it off.
  • Both men countered signatures of the other, but Tomasshole couldn't counter Johnny powerbombing him into the concrete that he'd revealed earlier.  The ensuing You Deserve It chant was lusty and well-deserved.
  • With the crutch in mid-ring both men stared each other down before crawling for it, grabbing one end each, and proceeding to jockey for possession of it.  
  • Johnny won and tuned up the Wisconsinite with a trio of shots, then landed a fourth to his injured leg.  He'd land another to set up his slingshot DDT but Ciampa survived. 
  • Did you watch their Cruiserweight Classic match seemingly a different universe ago?  Then the back elbow Ciampa landed might've looked familiar to you, as well as his Knee Trembler counter of the Superman spear.  He set up a follow-up enzui version with the DIY finishing pose beforehand...but Johnny survived.
  • This might be the first garbage match I can remember with a We Want Tables chant that didn't get it acquiesced to.
  • Johnny fired back up with clotheslines, then started slapping Ciampa while holding him by the beard.  His rewind rana looked dangerous (in the bad way) but he locked down an around the world Escape in short order.  TC got to the ropes LOL THAT MEANS NOTHING and Johnny stomped down on the hand a la Sasha/Bayley at TO:BK II, so Ciampa had to face rake himself free.
  • The reason you have Lawful Good people be the signature voice of your wrestling program is so that when a nefarious man commits a nefarious deed, the voice cursing to describe that man means something.  And another bout of FU Ciampa chants ensued.
  • Ciampa went to choke Gargano with his wrist tape, but as these things tend to happen, they ended up virtually tied at the wrists to each other, neither of them letting that stop them from punching the other with their free hand.
  • Then Ciampa did the smart thing and kicked Johnny in the theme park before laying him out with Project Ciampa.
  • ...but Johnny kicked out.
  • Tanks started to empty at this point.  Gargano weaker slaps.  Ciampa stronger slaps.  Gargano superkick!  Ciampa lariat!  Gargano Lawn Dart into the exposed turnbuckle (what, he set up something in a garbage match and made it work for him?  What is he, Jesus?)!  Basement superkick!
  • And then Johnny made Tommaso look at him awww yeahhh that's the good stuff
  • DIY pose!  BIGGER BASEMENT SUPERKICK!
  • ...but Tommaso kicked out. 
  • For the first time in Takeover history, we went into hour 4.  They fought on the top but Tommaso won, then delivered an AVALANCHE Project Ciampa.
  • ...if someone kicks out of your finisher, you may be screwed.
  • If someone kicks out of the super version of your finisher?  You are screwed.
  • It couldn't have happened to a nicer Psychopath.
  • TC exposed the knee for another CWC callback, but this time Johnny not only saw it coming but smacked the injured knee with the crutch.  He stomped it down until it snapped, got Tommaso lined up...
  • ...and then pulled up.
  • I cannot properly convey with the English language the level of horror in everybody's voice when Johnny not only did that, but fired himself up again and failed to pull the trigger again.
  • Dayenu, gentlemen.
  • I would've been fine with giving Johnny the last word after that.   Instead, he got the last ether.

Match of the Night: ECIII v. Killian Dain v. Adam Cole v. Velveteen Dream v. Lars Sullivan v. Ricochet, ladder match for the North American championship 

 Since #DIY imploding technically didn't happen, we have to go to the show opener for our OW OW OWWWW STOP IT I WAS KIDDING JESUS H

Match of the Night: Tommaso Ciampa v. Johnny Gargano, unsanctioned

The joke in some circles is that NXT is the place where alignments go to die; that amongst hardcores, playing almost exclusively to hardcores in what's become more or less God's E-Fed, people are too appreciative of the people performing to cheer who they're supposed to cheer or vice versa and that as a result, some moments get muted from what they were fully intended to be.

Do tell.

Bo Dallas annoyed people past the point of no return.  Kevin Owens also shanked his best friend in the back.  Samoa Joe laid waste to seemingly the entire roster.

The three of them combined and possibly doubled could not have touched the sheer rancor that the Psycho Killer endeared.

For all the new school sheen, it was old school wrestling at its finest: this man is Bad.  Very, very bad.  Now that we've gotten your money, please respond with a level of vitriol that you feel is appropriate.  That grandmother from a couple of weeks ago could've showed up and jumped to rail to try and swing on him; in fact, they probably should've paid her to do it.  Ciampa undoubtedly with his trio of attacks vaulted himself into the upper most echelon of NXT heels and probably cemented himself as the King of Shitheel Mountain by being the most reviled man on the roster without even saying a word.

This egress demanded repairing.  It wasn't that somebody had to fix this transgression, this universal perversion of the lines of mortality; it was that there was only one body that could do it.

The circle closes the way it opens.

And Ciampa reveled in the boos and did dirty underhanded things and preyed upon his former friend's sympathies up until the moment he was extinguished.   He failed in his task at only this: being on the other side of Johnny's rebel heart, especially when you're the first person to really cut in it deep and piss it off, is 180 degrees away from having it and him have your back.

So his skill failed, his chicanery failed, and when he had exhausted those reserves he found himself french kissing his brace while submitting in a tandem set of final ignonimity.

It couldn't have happened to a nicer asshole.

For 322 days it stewed and slow cooked, down to the bone of Gargano's temporary unemployment.  But Johnny Wrestling, possibly soon to be renamed Johnny Five Stars, literally fought his way back from stay-at-home husband, fighting harder than he had in both his tandem and singular title shots and defenses to blot out the Blackheart once.  Probably not "and for all", but in this instance this once was sweet, delicious, and the chef's kiss on a year's worth of hard work.

The crowd chanted lustily that Tommaso deserved his downfall even while it was happening; but in crafting a Magnum/Tully at NXT's equivalent of Starrcade, Johnny deserved every single bit of redemption he managed to garner.

...the odds that Ciampa ruins a future Johnny title shot against Black in the next six months have been taken off of the board in Vegas.

Let's Go Home:  

Sometimes, I honestly feel dumb reviewing these.  If we had space constraints and I was forced to post a picture of a post-it that said "What are you, stupid?  It's Takeover!  Watch it!"  I would completely understand.

What am I to do next, talk people into buying puppies?  Persuade a drinker to have just one more beer?  Somehow convince Breezus to take a selfie?

It feels like every time Takeover happens, it's special, and that's because they are.  We know we're getting good wrestling, yet we are continually astounded at how good it is.  We get instant classics and immediate Match of the Year candidates, then another season rolls around and they happen again and our jaws are left in the breeze like a tire swing on a summer day.

The main roster takes and breaks, and in the fallow times we're convinced the goose is no longer golden, that the eggs have once and finally dried up, and then a nest explodes with four Fort Knoxes.

Anyways.  For the women, it's probably call up time for Ember, and a Shayna/Kairi  rematch that's on deck.  For the men, the Era's Expedition of Gold continues apace with only two belts left to vacuum up and a pay per view in Britain on the horizon.

Do they have an answer for Black with their numbers?

It's entirely possible.  But here's what's entirely true: every moment spent writing or reading about Takeover is a little bit wasted.  Because when they're this damn good (and they usually are) you should just be watching the damn things.

Until the next one, fellow nerds.
↧

To Be Continued: WrestleMania 34 Review

April 9, 2018, 1:25 pm
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Tune into Smackdown Tuesday to see more creative ways Nakamura can low-blow Styles!
Photo Credit: WWE.com
In TH Style, of course. You can still watch this for free on WWE Network as a new subscriber, but at this point, maybe just peep RAW and Smackdown this week instead? I dunno.

Highlights:
  • Seth Rollins became the final member of The Shield to attain Grand Slam status as he captured the Intercontinental Championship after curb stomps on both Finn Bálor and The Miz.
  • Charlotte Flair ended Asuka's unbeaten streak and retained the Smackdown Women's Championship with the Figure Eight.
  • Jinder Mahal outlasted Randy Orton, Bobby Roode, and Rusev to win the United States Championship with a Khallas on Rusev.
  • Ronda Rousey and Kurt Angle bested Stephanie McMahon and Triple H, as Rousey tapped McMahon out with a cross-armbreaker.
  • The Bludgeon Brothers won the Smackdown Tag Team Championships with an assisted avalanche sitout powerbomb on on Kofi Kingston.
  • Undertaker finally answered John Cena's badgering of him with a thorough ass-whipping, ending with a tombstone piledriver.
  • Daniel Bryan and Shane McMahon defeated Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens. Bryan submitted Zayn with the YES! Lock after a Solid Knee Plus.
  • Nia Jax smushed Alexa Bliss with an avalanche Samoan drop to win the RAW Women's Championship.
  • AJ Styles retained the WWE World Heavyweight Championship over Shinsuke Nakamura by countering Kinshasa into the Styles Clash. After the match, Nakamura gave Styles a low blow.
  • Braun Strowman chose Nicholas, a ten-year old child from the crowd, as his partner and defeated The Bar to win the RAW Tag Team Championships with a running powerslam on Cesaro.
  • Brock Lesnar put Roman Reigns down with six F5s to close WrestleMania still as Universal Champion.

General Observations:
  • In case you were wondering, the most badass person in the building didn't compete on the pre-show or the main card, but was crushing Bud tallboys in the cheap seats.
  • You'd think a dude whose entrance music proclaims he wants to BURN IT DOWN wouldn't associate with the Night King, the living embodiment of ice in Game of Thrones, but then again, I've never really associated WWE with keeping the integrity of its pop culture references in check. Besides, Seth Rollins did look pretty cool with the icy blue White Walker contact lenses in anyway.
  • I expected Finn Bálor to have a big entrance, and he did, but not production wise. Even if WWE is a hollow corporate entity that would sell out the LGBTQ+ community for a buck, I don't for one second doubt that Bálor doesn't mean it when he says his club is for everyone. He showed as much with the queer folks he had surrounding him as he entered.
  • Imagine having like third row seats to WrestleMania facing the hard camera and using that opportunity to stump for Hulk Hogan's return to WWE. Couldn't be me. Money is wasted on the worst possible people, I swear.
  • Of course, the most appropriate time to cut to John Cena downing $12 drafts in the crowd is right after a hot Bálor tope con hilo, but everyone should know by now Kevin Dunn embodies the aphorism "It's not what you know, but who you know" when it comes to long-term employment.
  • Having a triple threat with Rollins and Bálor means needing a lot of spots to happen with good or better timing, and Miz hit every single one of his highspot counters exactly when he needed to hit them, a far cry from the 2011 version of him who caught high flyers on dives like your uncle catches the football after six beers at the Labor Day family picnic.
  • The super slow motion on the Rollins frogsplash which showed starkly how much air he got on it, which is as good as one could hope for on a Dunn-produced replay. Sometimes, that crack staff gets it right.
  • You couldn't have asked for a more perfect opener to WrestleMania. It allayed all my fears about triple threat layout because it didn't have the requisite spots where one dude was laying around for a good long time. It was kinetic and energetic, and even though any one of the three guys could have won satisfactorily, they actually chose the most correct winner.
  • John Cena Crowd Shot Counter: 2, between matches. I think someone actually had tabs on him being escorted out to go to the bathroom on Twitter. I don't believe that this is the age of too much information, but shit like that makes me think twice.
  • Charlotte Flair's entrance having the neat callbacks — using her dad's cut of "Also Sprach Zarathustra" and having the masked gladiators escort her in the same way she, Sasha Banks, and Alexa Bliss escorted Triple H years ago — elevated her stature going into the match, especially since being on Smackdown Live! does no favors for anyone's aura.
  • The one thing I want to know is if the live crowd could see all the 3D projection images during various entrances like Asuka's or if it was just a production thing for the streaming audience.
  • John Cena Crowd Shot Counter: 3, right during the beginning of this match. I think maybe if they were going to have Cena intrude on a match with his presence, it might've been good to have picked, I don't know, the Smackdown Tag Titles rather than one with an undefeated streak on the line? That's just me.
  • A lot of things impressed me about Flair/Asuka (see below), but their use of ropes as leverage points for offensive maneuvering was really fresh.
  • Look, I don't really care that they didn't hit the counter cleanly. Asuka countering the Flair moonsault into a triangle choke was extremely badass as a visual.
  • John Cena Crowd Shot Counter: 4, soon after the moonsault counter. I started to have a bad feeling about this at that point in time.
  • Commentary playing up how Flair has a "gymnastics background" made me sigh that that sort of thing is only really seen as a positive for women when I bet a male gymnast would fucking kill it in WWE.
  • "Charlotte was ready for Asuka" would've been a great moment had it maybe not come so early in Asuka's main roster tenure and if Cena hadn't trampled all over the moment by getting the NEWZ that Undertaker was in the building at the same time and ran out. Again, I don't really blame Cena. I blame the direction for putting this awkward puzzle together.
  • In case you wonder how fickle the crowd can be, Aiden English trampling all over GLORIOUS DOMINATION to announce Rusev Day was taken quite well. Bobby Roode's entrance was still pretty over all night, but it's like a drop of water that is the ocean of Rusev Day goodwill among WWE fans.
  • Jinder Mahal and Randy Orton got tossed from the ring early, reminding me how badly WWE punted by not making this match a singles showdown between Roode and Rusev.
  • I won't commend Randy Orton for much these days, but him jaw-jacking with a clearly pro-Rusev crowd, leaning into his hate, was at the very least self-aware.
  • On one hand, "inoffensive" was probably the ceiling for the US Championship match, so good job in hitting that. On the other, why should any match for WrestleMania have such a low bar to need to clear?
  • Of course, I got excited to see the return of Fashion Files only for it to be a Snickers ad. At least it was amusing, I guess.
  • Triple H's fetish for motorcycle culture always amused me because I wonder how many hours he and Stephanie McMahon have put on a hog. Maybe like two? Just for their WrestleMania entrances? I don't know. They both may legit be into bikes, but it just feels so fake and forced.
  • Commentary had the good sense to namedrop Ken Shamrock while introducing Ronda Rousey, but for crying out loud, he was there in New Orleans this weekend. I think I'd rather have seen him clapping for Rousey than Human Penis Dana White.
  • Speaking of which, White's attendance at Mania really did foreshadow the main event finish if you think about it. If you wanted to really swerve an audience, you'd build up the match to such a foregone conclusion that when it went the other way, you'd leave everyone scratching their heads, right? I wonder how much money Vince McMahon paid White to make the "BROCK LESNAR IS COMING BACK TO UFC" announcement.
  • Smilin' Drake Wuertz got the call-up from NXT to referee this match, furthering my desires to see him break out of the PMA-induced sleepwalk he's in and let his inner Drake Younger out to bash some fuckin' light tubes over peoples' skulls.
  • Corey Graves trying to catch Jonathan Coachman in a gotcha moment when he name-dropped LeBron James and Pat Riley in a comparison on the surface felt like another instance where the former sharply-witted a zinger over his partner in the booth, but given the context, I wonder if Graves really thought that Riley was a player and not a coach/executive? I mean, Triple H wasn't coaching McMahon, nor vice-versa. It felt so... strange.
  • Kurt Angle trying to reach out and tag Rousey for the first time was the most pathetic I'd ever seen him in the ring, which is saying something. I thought he mostly held his own during the match better than his prior two appearances, but man, I wish he'd just hang 'em up at this point.
  • Seeing Rousey's initial burst in the ring made me think she might just be okay at this wrestling thing. Of course, it doesn't make up for her vile social opinions, but hey, it's not like she's exclusive in that club. *sigh*
  • Look, I don't wanna give Triple H too much credit, but him sternly explaining the situation and giving Wuertz the ol' dad pat on the chest was perhaps the most unironically funny I've seen him in years.
  • Between his comments about what's coming next for Tommaso Ciampa in NXT that'll make you hate him even more (read, he's gonna wrestle Candice LeRae) and his actions dragging Rousey out of the ring and teasing a Pedigree on her in this match, it's a matter of time before WWE goes full-blown intergender. It's one thing to have men taking moves from women, but once the inverse happens too, that's the litmus test for the sponsors.
  • Rousey took the "Dolph Ziggler shoulder to the ringpost between the turnbuckles" bump everyone in WWE overuses, so I guess she's finally a full member of the roster now.
  • Stephanie McMahon, she who has wrestled once in the last decade, being a Brazilian jiu-jitsu savant enough to make Rousey try to armbar her THREE TIMES before she got it right was the most offensive thing to happen in a show where New Day would in the subsequent match come out to the ring with dwarves dressed up in pancake costumes. Yes, it was good storytelling in a vacuum, but I'm tired of fucking capital in WWE being presented as ubermensches when you have a whole roster of talented wrestlers who could be made special with not a lot of effort and not much more time with that effort exerted into similar features.
  • Seriously though, the dwarves in pancake costumes was some 1980s "bigotry is okay if it's fun" level Vince McMahon bullshit, and I'm sad that New Day went along with it (or even maybe thought the idea up themselves).
  • I think the only other thing I could say about the Smackdown Tag Title match was that I'm glad Erick Rowan spared the audience another contrived Tower of Doom spot? That match was utterly superfluous and perhaps it could have been the one where the DRAMA OF JOHN CENA SPRINTING TO THE BACK was presented.
  • Hey, speaking of John Cena, he's out to presumably face the Undertaker until the referee reappeared to tell him Taker wasn't there. But hey, it gave Elias a chance to get some Mania shine without having to wrestle in a match, I guess. In all seriousness, if it had been left at their interaction, it would still have been satisfying just because Elias playing in front of 78,000 strong is surreal enough.
  • I gotta wonder though. While I thought the Taker lightning magic stuff was decent because I like when wrestling skirts the absurd (I'm a Chikara fan, remember?) I wonder how many people could buy that and got really, really mad at the RAW Tag Team Championship match.
  • Honestly, Taker kicking the shit out of Cena was the only real way that angle should have ended. I mean, think about it. Cena went on television for weeks doing everything but saying Undertaker had no penis. Imagine being an adrenaline-and-testosterone-soaked meathead wrestler for a second and seeing those words flung at you. What would you have done? Engage in The Discourse™? Cena got what was coming to him, storyline-wise, that is.
  • It was also good to see Taker complete a Mania match and not leave the ring knocking on shoot-death's door for once.
  • Y'know, using the same graphics for Daniel Bryan's return vignette as they used for Vanguard-One's display screen during the Ultimate Deletion only raised so many eyebrows of fantasy bookers who wanted union between perhaps the two biggest, unlikeliest wrestling success stories of the last five years.
  • On one hand, trying to scare everyone by teasing stretcher spots for a wrestler who just got back from career-threatening injuries feels like a dick move. ON the other hand, I did kinda dig the symmetry between Bryan's last match at the SuperDome and this return one.
  • I watched Matt Riddle's Bloodsport this weekend, and aside from it being a unique and satisfying show, it featured Dan Severn engaging in a dad fight where he turned shades of red I didn't think were possible from the human body. Why am I bringing this up? Because I think Shane McMahon also watched Bloodsport and saw Severn's redness as some kind of challenge because hoo boy, he was a Crayola maroon crayon by the time that match was two minutes old.
  • Sami Zayn mocking McMahon's punches was perhaps the second best part of that match outside, of, well, seeing Daniel Bryan moving around the ring at full speed once again.
  • Zayn having to lean into McMahon's Coast-to-Coast attempt, something he hits with ease normally, was a microcosm for how much that whole story has gone from day one. I guess even in the end, you gotta play tight to the script.
  • Also, maybe don't compete in a high-energy contact sport/entertainment thing if you're two weeks removed from diverticulitis? I don't know, if that shit knocked Brock Lesnar from MMA, you might not wanna engage in highspot pro wrestling either.
  • For as low as some of the other points of Mania were, for those minutes where Bryan was going hard like he was in the past, nothing hurt and everything felt okay.
  • Between the match graphic and her entrance, WWE was really leaning into goddess/I'm above you imagery for Alexa Bliss. But I guess when you've got a match between an irresistible force and a quite movable object, you have to find ways to present the diminutive participant on a higher plane.
  • Nia Jax beating the Christ out of Mickie James to start the match was the smartest thing any wrestling babyface has ever done, so smart that I'm not sure it should have been allowed in wrestling canon.
  • You might have said that Jax should've murdered Bliss in 20 seconds and had some validity to your analysis. My whole thing is I'm not sure you do the Brock Lesnar over John Cena thing for anyone that you don't want to see as unbeatable in the near future. I don't think any division should have a Lesnar lording over it. Plus, it made sense for Bliss to have one last pass at manipulating Jax, albeit this time physically and not emotionally.
  • This scream exchange was perfect.
  • Between having Lzzy Hale play Ember Moon out at Takeover and Nita Strauss play Shinsuke Nakamura's theme, this weekend in WWE was a nice appreciation for women who can goddamn shred on the guitar. As one of those Dads who will talk your ear off about how the guitar is more important to a rock band than the vocalist, well, I was in my glory.
  • Hyping up a history that WWE doesn't own isn't new for the company, but it's still annoying seeing the commentary talk about the rich history between the two while actively trying to snuff out the place where it happened. It also contrasts between the blood rivalries they present borrowed from other places and the ones that are built in-house, like Ciampa vs. Johnny Gargano.
  • Graves subtly knocked the Tokyo Dome by wondering if Nakamura could perform in front of a crowd that large, and I can only hope Dave Meltzer suffered a spontaneous brain bleed from hearing that.
  • I saw a lot of chatter online that this match didn't go as hard as people wanted it to, and while I do think Nakamura and AJ Styles left something on the table, what they did put out was fuckin' stiff-looking man. Some of those counters and strikes looked so hard that I almost felt them on my couch.
  • Second instance on the night when the super slow motion enhanced the action — Nakamura delivering a gutbuster to Styles and watching the ripples in Styles' ribs striate like an ocean wave breaking over the sandbar. It was about as graphic as you could get without breaking skin.
  • I feel like the Bob Backlund short-arm-scissors lift spot is overused nowadays. After seeing Styles use it and noting how everyone uses it now, not just Reigns, kinda makes it not as special a feat of strength. Then again, WWE isn't quite known for uniqueness.
  • Of COURSE Nakamura turned on Styles after the match. I almost half-expected him to have claimed it vengeance for World War II, given Road Dogg and PS Hayes might have that bullet in their creative chambers.
  • Honestly, Braun Strowman throwing The Bar's float off the stage was great, but would it have killed WWE to have paid an indie wrestler extra hazard pay to be in it when it went hurtling off the stage?
  • Strowman going into the crowd to find a partner almost made me think he was going to find like Rey Mysterio or someone just chilling there. He passed by No Way Jose and Trent Seven at least, but no NXT wrestler would have been as cool as the person he did pick...
  • ...look, the story all along was that Strowman didn't need anyone to win the tag titles, so why not pick a kid? WWE should be doing cool shit like that to appeal to its youth audience. Besides, the tag sequence with him was something that actually did put smiles on faces, well, at least my face.
  • I'm not the kind of person who likes to legislate how a crowd reacts as long as they're not doing premeditated shit like throwing beach balls, but for fuck's sake, CM Punk is not coming back. Stop chanting that miserable fucker's name.
  • Lesnar really didn't give a fuck in this match, did he? He nearly killed Roman Reigns on the belly-to-belly in the table and on a German suplex in the ring. Either that, or Reigns sandbagged him. Knowing how fickle Lesnar has been in the past and how seemingly professional Reigns conducts himself, I'm willing to say the onus was more on the Champ.
  • This match was basically nothing but German suplex, belly-to-belly suplex, F5, Superman punch, spear, ground punching, and that one knee counter Lesnar had to the spear. And it still went over 15 minutes. HOW?
  • I'm not so sure Reigns busted open hard way, or at least I wasn't when I thought he was going to win. Having Reigns soaked in his own blood holding the Universal Championship might have been the thing to break his malaise with the vocal portion of the crowd that hates him, but WWE inexplicably had Lesnar win.
  • Seriously, if WWE continues to push Reigns as THE guy and the ONLY guy, it's professional malfeasance. He should've gone over Lesnar in Santa Clara. He definitely double should've gone over him last night. But I'm beyond caring about Vince McMahon's psychotic booking anymore.

Match of the Night:Charlotte Flair vs. Asuka— It's hard to explain sometimes how some matches just feel bigger, how some wrestlers just rise to the occasion a little bit more easily than others. The kicks pop just a little harder. The lock-ups seem just a little tenser. Assigning meaning or effort levels to a match just by watching it can feel reductive or trite, but sometimes, just watching two wrestlers go at it can give off the vibe that the match they're creating means just a little more to them than their peers on the same card. Asuka and Charlotte Flair exuded that intangible aura, even as they were tasked with going on second on a show where their match could very well have believably headlined. My joshi watching is woefully not up to snuff, so I can't reliably say that their match felt like something that could have happened at Big Egg Universe without coming off like a transparent fraud. However, it felt a lot more like Joshimania would have felt on a bigger, better-produced stage than even a regular singles pay-per-view women's match in WWE would have felt lately.

The match felt cinematic in its execution from jump, with Flair and Asuka wrenching at each other, breaking out taunts, even upping the game on the little spots that people take for granted, like Flair picking Asuka's heel as she ran the ropes on a fairly standard feeling out-process sequence. The escalation came at a climactic point with Flair going from the apron to the barricade on a rope-bump spot, and it hit a sweeping crescendo when Asuka suplexed her off the apron to the floor. The counter of the moonsault into a triangle choke was another nice touch, all things that helped frame Asuka as this formidable wrecking ball whose streak wasn't some pro wrestling hullabaloo but an accurate forecast for how her battles all end.

But once again, Flair showed the sort of moxie that belies her family name, making her conquering of said streak feel valid, like something that was the satisfying conclusion no one knew they wanted until they got it. Whether it be shouting "IS THAT ALL YOU GOT?" in the midst of an Empress of Tomorrow onslaught or countering into a diving spear that went into the Figure Eight despite her inability to post on her left shoulder due to injury, she took the mantel of conquering hero and owned it throughout. All of those elements came together to make a match that overdelivered on whatever the lukewarm build promised, but that met and possibly exceeded what people, myself included especially, thought it could be when it was first announced. It was a WrestleMania classic if I ever saw one.

Overall Thoughts: WrestleMania started out feeling like WrestleMania, at least the idealized version of what WWE constantly keeps telling its viewers of what it is. The Intercontinental Championship triple threat had three gaudy entrances, a great layout, big spots, three hungry workers working the crowd into a frenzy, and a memorable finish with a fan-favorite taking home gold. Then the second match happened, and it felt like it belonged on WrestleMania. Again, the entrances were over-the-top, the stakes were sky-high, and the wrestlers went into overdrive to present a contest that felt deserving of the culminatory wrestling card of the year. The decision felt a bit odd in retrospect. It's one thing to end Asuka's streak in one match or have her, the first women's Royal Rumble match winner, fail in her attempt to win the title, but both? Hey, if that was the worst decision on the show, then it was a good night.

The problem was that decisions even more terrible, more short-sighted, more destructive kept following, opening the floodgates for questions and critiques that might signify WWE doesn't know what it wants its flagship show to be. Between allowing Road Dogg and Michael PS Hayes to fuck the Jinder Mahal in a feature role chicken again, letting Stephanie McMahon show better defense of Ronda Rousey's MMA-inspired offense than real MMA fighters have, putting on a weekly free-TV level Smackdown Tag Title match, turning Shinsuke Nakamura heel in a match that felt muted instead of one of the co-main events, or once again cutting Roman Reigns off at the knees to placate the push of one of the most tired acts in modern WWE history, the vibe went from WrestleMania to Great Balls of Fire or worse as the night wore on. WWE has homogenized its product so much that nothing really makes much of a dent unless it's a huge return or debut anyway. It's only shocks to the system that really get people going because everything else just feels like it's the same grind.

The fact that all three members of the Intercontinental Championship match got special entrances while no one in the Universal Championship match did was emblematic of that decline. Sure, other competitors got special entrances in between, whether the usual suspects like Triple H and Stephanie McMahon or reputedly-underappreciated wrestlers who have been treated as "geeks" in the recent past like The Bar. But why wouldn't AJ Styles have a gaudy entrance? Or Nia Jax? Ronda Rousey? I get the idea of using restraint so as not to wear out the special entrance, but conversely, WrestleMania is the only time of the year where you go all out with the pomp and the pageantry. I understand not giving the pre-show wrestlers that kind of shine. Maybe, maybe selectively denying big entrances to entities that hadn't quite established themselves in a way that warranted embellishment, which at this point is probably on the Bludgeon Brothers, was in order. But I mean how the hell do you have no special entrances for the main event? It's surreal.

The thing is the booking in so many of those matches corroborated with the lack of pop in presentation. How many of those decisions reeked of transitional episode of television or interstitial pay-per-view? I understand wanting to set up a longer story between Styles and Nakamura, for example, but shouldn't Mania be the place where the resolution happens, not the opening act? It's a habit of WWE booking that is infuriating, and it ignores the fact that the best Manias, both piecemeal matches and events on the whole, were couched in stories that had endings rather than ones that were used as fodder to start feuds that go into the spring dry season. Things like Batista's rise to the World Heavyweight Championship, Daniel Bryan's ascension at Mania XXX, Bret Hart's year-long chase of Yokozuna between IX and X, the MegaPowers' final collision all were culminations.

It shouldn't be surprising that the things that worked on the show were culminations. The points where Mania felt like Mania the most — the ending of Asuka's streak, Daniel Bryan and Shane McMahon vanquishing Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens for good, Ronda Rousey getting her pound of McMahon flesh — felt like endings of stories, or at least milestones within a larger epic. I doubt Asuka is done with Flair, but Flair's victory can be the Empire Strikes Back to the next chapter's Return of the Jedi. However, each came with its own baggage that signified various fatal flaws within the WWE superstructure. The only stories that matter usually involve McMahons. The Asuka thing magnifies the hangup that creative has in telling the predictable but satisfying story, especially when it comes to the Royal Rumble winner. All those things in a vacuum might not matter, but when the rest of the show sags the way it did, then those flaws get magnified.

One could make the argument that WrestleMania isn't what fans expect it to be, or that consumers have way too high of expectations for the event, both of which ring exceedingly hollow. The former isn't necessarily just fan perception, but it's what WWE sells this event as every year. It's the culmination of its creative calendar. It's the biggest event of the year, a place for epic battles, satisfying resolutions, incredible moments. It's not an invention of rabid outsider fans; it has evidence from WWE supporting it. You can't expect the company to trot out video package after video package detailing the mythic happenings and then serve up three-quarters of a card that is basically telling you "Tune in during Backlash for the resolution!" The latter criticism gives content producers too much absolution for not fulfilling on promises that are made, implicitly or explicitly, in a capitalist environment. You can't create this tentpole event and underdeliver, and when you're a company that likes to boast how good you treat your fans, you can't end your two top male Championship matches the way that they ended.

All Mania goes to show is that Vince McMahon has lost the plot on what his marquee event should be. Instead of a tight, season finale atmosphere where fans have to painstakingly choose which moment they thought was most memorable, he decided to try and outsmart everyone else trying to follow along and promise that he'll have your money next week instead of tonight. Wrestling struggles with its identity so much because of this propensity for promoters, not just McMahon, but especially McMahon always trying to delay gratification to wring a few extra shekels out of the audience and not knowing where to stop despite the fact that they've got multiple examples of said gratification as precedent. It's why moments like the Randy Savage and Miss Elizabeth reunification stand out; they're diamonds in a sea of carbon slurry. It's just a shame that so much of Mania's history, including most of this year's, has to feel like part of the raging black sea.
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The Wrestling Blog's OFFICIAL Best in the World Rankings for April 9, 2018

April 9, 2018, 4:40 pm
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Photo 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. Daniel Bryan (Last Week: 1) - It wasn't a bloodbath like against Takeshi Morishima or a five-star technical classic against Nigel McGuinness or an emotion-soaked underdog battle like against Triple H, but by god, Daniel Bryan back in a pro wrestling ring just felt right. It was like he didn't miss a beat at all. God bless.

2. Ben Simmons (Last Week: Not Ranked) - Joel Embiid out with a concussion? No fear, Ben Simmons is here to lead the way. The Sixers continued their winning ways thanks to the first-year player's historic run, reaching 50 wins and clinching a playoff berth. With Simmons dishing the ball and making things happen, the Sixers will be dangerous against any team in the East and who knows, maybe a few teams out West too.

3. Toni Storm (Last Week: Not Ranked) - While I regret to inform you all that Storm didn't show up at SHIMMER 100 with a tiny hat, she did show up with her working boots on, taking on Nicole Matthews in an instant classic. She did end up winning, but would she have ended up winning even more impressively had she opted for the tiny hat? Of course not you idiots, it's a work, and she's a consummate professional.

4. Braun Strowman (Last Week: 6) - Was his choice of tag partner disappointing? Only because he didn't choose my kid to team with him. Still though, how fuckin' cool is that he picked a kid, even if it was a plant for all intents and purposes? You say it's a disgrace to wrestling, but I say that it's the essence of wrestling, to be anything, that a monstrous human being could still have a heart enough of gold to win a title with the demographic audience for pro wrestling.

5. Nick Gage (Last Week: Not Ranked) - Gage may not have had the surprise buzz match Mania weekend like PCO did with WALTER, but man, he certainly brought the MDK. He vs. Thatcher was the best match on Bloodsport, and he had a really fun, violent brawl with Penta El Zero M at Spring Break. Gotta give credit where it's due; Nick Gage is a special wrestler.

6. Shohei Ohtani (Last Week: 9) - Last week, he wowed with his arm. This past week, he started hitting dingers. I predict this coming week, he'll do a hostile takeover of Rob Manfred's office and institute beer league softball rules at the stadium. Or not. I don't know. Either way, he's pretty much all that was advertised and then some.

7. Asuka (Last Week: 4) - So what, she lost her streak at Mania. I mean, Undertaker lost his streak at Mania a couple of years ago, and he got to appear via lightning and beat the piss out of John Cena. Asuka still is rad as hell, and she's gonna have a whole new world of opportunities ahead of her now that the streak doesn't define her. Also, at least she didn't lose via cattle prod only to see the one who beat her do a contrived fingerpoke double cross the next night. Or have to lose it to Ronda Rousey in her first match.

8. Bacon Cheeseburger (Last Week: Not Ranked)OFFICIAL HOLZERMAN HUNGERS SPONSORED ENTRY - Nifty Fifty's is a Delco/Philly area staple, and they have lots of good stuff on the menu. Sometimes though, I just want a bacon by god cheeseburger, and boy was it good.

9. Spyder Nate Webb (Last Week: Not Ranked) - Look, he might look like he's knock knock knockin' on death's door, but the man still had enough energy and enthusiasm to tour the ENTIRE Pontchartrain Center and lead a packed house in singing "Teenage Dirtbag" before helping sew up the end of the Clusterfuck. I gotta respect that man. I just got to.

10. Oney Lorcan (Last Week: 10) - Oney Lorcan (and Danny Burch) made sure Axxess was here for porkin'.
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