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The Past is Prologue: Total Divas Season 2, Episode 8 -- Summer Rae Vs. The World

May 13, 2014, 7:30 am
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Summer Rae is the tragic figure of Total Divas
Photo Credit: WWE.com
Hello! Sorry again that I didn't do any recaps the past couple of weeks on the reality duality of Total Divas and Legends House. And sorry that I'm just going to avoid recapping Legends House from now on because it more or less doesn't really appeal to me after the episodes I've seen. I don't think that will be much of a problem, but you gotta be nice to the fine folks who like the regularity of columns about this fun stuff we like, complain, and then ultimately realize we love. So that's fun.
In my time off, I took a look at what a lot of other people I respect say about the show, chief among them the minds of Kayfabe Comedy. Their Total Divas power rankings were just as fun this time last year, but ultimately it's kind of fallen by the wayside. I kind of want to say it's because the show just became too unlikable to properly gauge how I feel about certain characters, but that's not completely true. Nah, the change was more of a weird human fallacy that I realized I was carrying into a show that doesn't really care about anything other than broad drama. I became more than sympathetic towards Summer Rae. I almost felt like that me and Summer Rae were living out the exact struggle in life. Well, okay, as much as a 24-year-old overweight heterosexual male can relate to a 29-year-old tan model heterosexual female athlete and with all the privilege therein in that dichotomy. But dammit, aren't we the secret outcasts? I like what Adam of Kayfabe Comedy had to say on this. Please read his piece, which is better at saying this than what I can tell you, but here's my takeaway quote from him:
Regardless, I have to feel for Summer Rae, even though she is the most TV character of TV characters.  On Total Divas she is portrayed as being manipulative and possibly a succubus, even though at the most she is naïve.  Taking the narrative of the show into consideration, maybe it was dumb to show up unannounced to Nattie Neidhart’s house and to accuse her of being super jelly.  But let’s remember the information we’re given about Summer Rae on this show:  she’s never slept with a WWE coworker despite rumors being spread about her to the contrary, she has not been intimate with anyone in over a year, and she is being accused for being cheap or slutty because she wears the same type of outfits that every other woman on the WWE roster does.  So she snapped and slapped Nattie in the face.  Her passion was so bottled up that it came out in that fashion.
Summer Rae this week has a curious story as a part of her pairing with Eva Marie. Basically, Summer and Eva are pitched to be "a tag team," which sounds like a strange staged request but whatever. Summer wants to train and make sure there is chemistry in the ring between her and Eva because the main goal is to not screw up. Eva Marie, though, more or less screws up. This is a narrative everyone already knows in that Summer Rae became one of the more well-liked women's wrestlers in the company and Eva Marie has become the running joke. Of course when this is acknowledged by Summer, people say it hurts Eva's feelings when she suddenly realizes what the situation is.

Now, part of this narrative is of the fact that as the above tweet implies, Summer didn't find the best way to do it. She mainly passively insisted Tamina Snuka be added to the team to give something watchable to the match. But when all of this occurred and of course we are told that everyone else on the show can't stand Summer for this yet again, I again found myself realizing Summer Rae is someone I sympathize with because her flaws make absolute sense in a workplace environment. There is a toxicity to telling someone that they are awful at their job to their face no matter the reality. I wish it wasn't this way, but you kind of have to maneuver out of a bad situation. Work is paranoia. You wonder if the fact that you do the same job while others do different jobs has anything to do with your own talent. I'm rambling here, but what I'm saying is that I get it.

Since her arrival, we've been told Summer Rae is an awful person. But in reality, she is a fallible person. Shit, isn't that what we all are in many ways? I don't remember the last time I've handled a situation in the correct manner, but it's not based on malice. Most humans don't base their points of view or actions on malice. They base them on judgment calls, a lot of which can easily blow up in their faces. And on Total Divas, the only person seemingly making any of these sorts of calls in a manner that doesn't suggest the boring passivity of the other six is Summer Rae. She is not the power of Total Divas, but she is definitely the main generator of action. She is the human voice inside this weird reality hell where slut-shaming is okay and we are following wrestling marriages to an absurdly barren degree.  Maybe that's why I'm willing to be like "I mean, what the hell do you do in that situation?" during everything that comes up.

Summer Rae is a human inside a TV character who feels human inside a show about "divas," whatever the fuck that means.
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The Flood of Time: Jacobs vs. Peck Signed for Easton

May 13, 2014, 10:30 am
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Graphics Credit: ChikaraPro.com
Well, I whiffed on predicting Jimmy Jacobs' debut match as the leader of the Flood, but the alternatives seem to be on the same level at the very least. Icarus getting his shot at the Grand Championship at You Only Live Twice in Easton was announced last week. As for Jacobs, he will get the next logical first opponent for him in Archibald Peck. The Leader of The Band has been scarce around these parts since his unmasking from the Mysterious and Handsome Stranger cowl, but it wasn't fruitless. He was able to return, with 3.0, from Parts Unknown and help save the day at National Pro Wrestling Day.

Anyway, if you want to see that match, and all the other ones as well, for free, then you have a chance via the site Body Slam Your Brain. If you head to the contests page, you can sign up for this one, and all future contests, but enrolling in the site's free eNewsletter. If you don't win a free Internet pay-per-view order of You Only Live Twice, don't fret. You can still win the consolation prize of the finals of Wrestling Is Fun!'s Tag World Grand Prix finals also taking place on iPPV the night before.
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The Best Moves Ever: Ranhei

May 14, 2014, 4:30 am
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Kofi Kingston's SOS is a cool looking move, but partially because he's Kofi Kingston and partially because WWE doesn't allow for the crisp execution necessary for some maneuvers to pop out of the television screen. Luckily for the viewer and maybe unluckily for the guy taking it, Makoda's original execution of the move, known as the ranhei, looks pretty badass to me.

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Did Full Sail Land on WWE, or Did WWE Land on Full Sail? A Response to Voices of Wrestling

May 14, 2014, 7:30 am
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If Paige fails, it won't be because NXT didn't give her the tools to succeed
Photo Credit: WWE.com
Friend of the blog and co-auteur of Voices of Wrestling Rich Kraetsch wrote a look at the relationship between NXT and WWE. Citing Paige, Emma, and Adam Rose as examples, he made the argument that NXT might be failing WWE because it had become the one thing that the company had tried to distance itself from: an indie promotion. Right now, Rose and Emma at least are undeniably cold. Paige gets some reactions, but she's certainly not at the level expected of the savior of a flagging division.

In all cases, however, I might argue that extenuating circumstances on behalf of all the performers mitigate their underwhelming reactions from the crowd. None of them fit a single profile, but they all have solid reasons as to why they may not be lighting the world on fire. I'll tackle each individually, since the broad brush is not the appropriate tool to use here.

EMMA - Emma was doomed almost from the start. Her debut was inventive, but once she paired off with Santino Marella, the writers tied her to the offensive and predictable "wrestler's girlfriend" character. Emma in NXT was anything but an accessory to a man; as Brandon Stroud points out every week Emma appears on RAW, she had a nuanced persona that stood on her own. Even saddled with the exhausted trope of needing to be attached to a man, fans reacted to her when she wrestled. The Emma Lock, DilEMMA, and the EMMAmite Sandwich all got pops. Fans, as scattered as they may have been throughout various crowds, were ready to see women wrestlers evolve. Emma's failures are about as far from her fault as they can be, and they certainly can't be laid at the feet of her teachers and producers from NXT when their bosses in WWE ignored the entire template that made her successful in the first place.

ADAM ROSE - I still feel that any verdict on Rose right now is premature. Not only is the character new to WWE, he was thrust into it within the calendar year of 2014 in NXT. Sure, the character is two-dimensional at best, at least as it's currently configured. But even the skewed crowd at Full Sail University didn't have the chance to see a second act like it did with every other character that made the main roster. Even Bo Dallas (who will receive the next referendum from the main show crowd) got long amounts of time with both his characters.

Still, the claim that Kraetsch made that the character is a "small room" persona, which I am not sure he, or anyone can make before seeing how it plays in a larger one. Wrestling is more art than science. If something works in front of one audience, the goal is to keep trying it in front of an increasingly larger one until it fails. Empirical knowledge is needed for any character, and the Aldous Snow party-boy gimmick is one that's relatively untested in a pro wrestling milieu. The gimmick needing more time to sink or swim may be a valid possibility.

PAIGE - Paige's assessment as a failure so far is the one that I disagree with most. If the goal is to pop the crowd and work solid matches on television, then she's done her job exceptionally well so far. Unless my ears deceive me, she gets the people reacting to her. In fact, for a 21 year-old who was thrust with the mantel of Champion for her division, she's performed above and beyond expectation from my point of view.

But if she's expected to be getting Daniel-Bryan-at-SummerSlam reaction from jump, however, then of course she's doomed to fail. She wasn't handed the keys to a new Porsche, ready to zoom around the neighborhood with no work or restriction. The Divas division is more a jalopy, one that needs more work than anyone is willing to admit to get on course. The focus is on promoting a reality show, characters are pigeonholed into sexist, one-dimensional templates, and the matches rarely get any kind of meaningful time on Main Event or Superstars, let alone RAW.

Yet, she's still got the crowds behind her. Kraetsch claims it's only the hardcore fans. Dismissing the fact that I'm not sure how anyone can tell which fans are reacting to what, having the hardcore guys at your back isn't a negative. Daniel Bryan would not be the WWE World Heavyweight Champion right now had it not been for the "smarks" at WrestleMania XXVIII who chanted "YES!" from the moment he lost to Sheamus in the opening match until the dark match after RAW ended the next night. Those fans trained the "casual" fans how to react to Bryan, and that seed blossomed. I can definitely see a similar situation playing out with Paige. She's already well on her way
The above three examples, not so oddly enough, are only three of the most recent call-ups. The NXT system has also produced a home run of an act in the Wyatt Family and a HOSS in the making (who is experiencing similar lack of help that is characteristic of both Emma and Rose) in Big E Langston. The system itself isn't a failure inasmuch as the gimmicks it produces may be mixed bags. However, even if the wrestlers it produces don't exactly light the world on fire with the gimmicks they receive at Full Sail/the Performance Center, what they are taught before making it to the main stage is the invaluable thing.

For example, Tyler Black was the worst kind of indie move trader, and I say "worst" as a matter of personal taste. I know many people out there dug him in Ring of Honor and other promotions, and that fact is okay. But leaving out taste in mind, the time he spent in developmental taught him how to hone his game for television. Now, I would think he's objectively good at working as a WWE-style highspot babyface. Jon Moxley fine-tuned his game and has become the Dean Ambrose who looks to light the WWE on fire in the next decade (maybe literally, I don't know, that motherfucker's crazy). Antonio Cesaro went BACK to developmental and had an epic series with Sami Zayn, who also tweaked what he already did as El Generico in the indies. Countless other wrestlers whom I have not had the chance to watch before they got to WWE also have gone through the Full Sail/Performance Center wringer and come out as fine wrestlers.

From that standpoint, NXT is an unmitigated success. The main function is to give the wrestlers the tools to succeed on the main roster, not necessarily to give them the gimmicks or the exact characters. Wrestlers who remain on the main roster sometimes go through several gimmick changes through their careers, but the ones who can work, the ones who know how to carry themselves, the ones who can talk into a microphone without sounding like Adam Sandler's "Cajun Man" character from Saturday Night Live will get more than one chance to run the ball.

The stark truth is that not every gimmick, and not every NXT graduate for that matter, is meant to succeed. Some failure has to be expected, and in the face of what that iteration of developmental has produced so far, I would say the cause for panic, both from the front office and the fans, is a bit premature. Full Sail/Performance Center isn't producing sure things at a historic clip yet, but at the same time, a lot of the problems rest with the front office. A school or a pipeline can only provide the raw material. The producers on the other end need to have the right direction. If WWE fails with Rose's current character, then maybe it wasn't meant to be, but if the company can't find anything for Ray Leppan to do, a guy who has busted his ass in developmental to get good, then it's the conglomerate who would have failed him.

And if WWE can't make Emma or especially Paige work, then Vince McMahon and his producers and writers should only look in the mirror to find the blame. Maybe those guys in the front office shouldn't be wondering if NXT is failing them, but if they're failing NXT.
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Your Midweek Links: The Real TV Champ

May 14, 2014, 10:30 am
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Believe... in the Monday Night RAW Champion
Photo Credit: WWE.com
It's hump day, so here are some links to get you through the rest of the week:

Wrestling Links:

- Who is the Champion of Monday Night RAW? [Voices of Wrestling]

- The Best and Worst of RAW: Solange and Thanks for All the Kicks [With Leather]

- The small man's burden and the dangers of workrate [False Underdog]

- Alternate Timelines: Who should've ended The Streak? [Wrestling on Earth]

- Seven Things: Most memorable wrestling moms [Wrestling on Earth]

- The Best and Worst of Impact Wrestling: Circus Plumbeus [With Leather]

- Rey Mysterio's last stand [Voices of Wrestling]

- Vintage Best and Worst: WCW Hog Wild 1996 [With Leather]

- Naomi's "Dance All Night" is everything we expected [With Leather]

Non-Wrestling Links:

- Twerking corgi is sports [SB Nation]

- The 2014 EDSBS Bowl: Charity in the name of spite [Every Day Should Be Saturday]

- The 2014 Mock Draft Mock Draft [Bleeding Green Nation]

- The official KSK 2015 Draft board [Kissing Suzy Kolber]

- Monday Morning Jerkface: The Draft Edition [The Footbawl Blog]

- A beautiful corpse: An oral history of the fast life and quick death of the XFL [SB Nation]

- Dudes: So you wanna be good at feminism [The Powder Room]

- Katie Couric's Fed Up takes a look at the food industry, obesity tropes [Kitchenette]

- How to cook and eat whole shrimp (yes, even their heads) [The Concourse]

- The most ridiculous fried foods from America's state fairs [Kitchenette]

- No, halfwit, Donald Sterling isn't the real victim here [Deadspin]

- If Donald Sterling isn't gone, LeBron James will boycott next season [With Leather]

- Which NBA team does your town root for? [Regressing]

- Tyrion is among the least skilled players of the Game of Thrones [io9]

- Trial by combat was real and spectacular [ATL-Redline]

- The 15 best television characters of the season [Warming Glow]

- Friday night "death slot" survivors [Observation Deck]

- We may have solved the mystery of the dying bees [io9]
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Best Coast Bias: We Be Clubberin'

May 14, 2014, 1:30 pm
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OH YOU DAMN SKIPPY THIS RULED
Photo Credit: WWE.com
Remember so long ago when Sheamus didn't have direction and this Cesaro heel turn seemed to be more in the hypothetical realm than here?

You should.  It was April.

But that was so long ago when it comes to these guys: now Sheamus is the man who puts the fight in fighting champion and Cesaro's the same brilliant prick he's always been except with a Heyman imprimatur added to the C.V.  Throw them in the ring together and you get something so good you want a rematch before the first chapter's done finished getting written.  It started with a Cesaro sneak attack on Sheamus to open the show after the new U.S. Champion interrupted Heyman and laid out the big Irishman with a Neutralizer.  It ended with a Brogue Kick in the face.  In the middle was a double countout.  But that was almost irrelevant.  For 15 minutes and the final two segments of the show a pair of the E's most talented and hard-hitting talents whaled on each other so hard you'd think the red siren was going off in Hartford all over again.

When you're watching European uppercut battles and cravates not three minutes in, you don't need Rosey or Jamal to tell you what's coming next: violence, and a metric Coulterton of it.  It wasn't just Cesaro throwing more uppercuts than Baskin Robbins has flavors, or Sheamus aiming for his nose when it wasn't his kidneys, though both of those things obviously helped.  It just felt like a fight, front to back and side to side.   On the short list of must-watch Main Event matches this is definitely in the discussion.  If you wanted to call it the best match WWEME's done so far this year, you could.  Most tantalizingly is that this seems to be the opening salvo into a feud that'll add prestige to the belt and the men competing for it.  This match shouldn't be written about; it should be watched.  Gleefully.

But this wasn't just a one-really-awesome note episode of Main Event.  Au contraire, mon frere.  In between the Renee/Heyman/Cesaro/Sheamus segment and the land war that exploded in the main event two of the more disgruntled employees of WWE both went down in losing efforts.   One of them complained about being metaphorically handcuffed, the other about being literally underrated.  Yet in a pleasantly surprising narrative beat it was the male whose effort was small beer compared to the female's. This is not to bash Damien Sandow.  WWE creative is already doing that enough and has since the summer.  But he can only lose to Dolph Ziggler so many times before it loses its heft.

So let's talk about Alicia Fox losing her marbles again, because whatever it was it was compelling as foxtrot unicorn charlie kilo.  It was almost a near full-on Groundhog's Day for the Foxy One as she jumped Emma pre-match after throwing the mic in her face (and scoring  a direct hit to boot) and getting in a few well-placed cheap shots before the match officially got started.  Once it did, short of the best Northern Lights in the Business she rattled off everything you'd want to see in her arsenal replete with cheating.  She was practically getting booed for existing, which is about the apex of heeldom irrelevant of gender.  She noted to the crowd that if they thought she was cray, they didn't know cray.  It seemed destined that Emma's only offense would be a rollup out of nowhere to cinch the victory (thus connecting it in a subtle thread to the rest of the show: every babyface got their W or their moment in the main Oliver Sudden -- see also, Zag, Zig and Kick, Brogue) and she managed to bail out before the tornado of psycho knocked her metaphorical house down.  Thus losing the opportunity to further slam dance with the Australian, Alicia would proceed to a) get frosty with the referee b) apologize to Tony Chimel and c) kiss him on the forehead before d) slapping him around a few times.

It was somewhere around that moment that one's Hader could be excused for clearing his throat.  Lest you think that was the end of it she would proceed to bear hug Phillips and Saxton while singing We Are Family before attempting to shake them down for their money and stuffing their papers down their throat DiBiase style and knocking them over in the process.  In fact she kicked all of the papers off the desk at one point, and stomped on the table before staring out at the crowd.  You know, those people booing her for merely existing.  It's kinda surprising Aksana hasn't come to get her girl yet, but man--compelling will fix a lot of narrative squickyness (scientific term).  As much as several corners of the Internet including this one have been ride or die Team Fox for several weeks if not months or years she didn't have whatever it was connecting her in a larger sense to the audience.

Two old-school Jerichoesque meltdowns later and we have a heel to care about.  Could she -- dare we even say it -- go Full Backlund?  There's been a loss to the champion, a deteriorating mental state, and it's not as if anybody else is providing a compelling counter narrative to Paige starting to establish herself on the flagship.  Honestly, what's Nattie going to do, bad painting her into a pin?

In another stalwart episode of Main Event, it seemed everything was permissible.  Most importantly, good wrestling with characters in flux and a clear thruline towards the future.  33% of RAW's time, and about 333% better to boot.

Just watch out for the brawling Europeans.
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Im Namen der Bruderschaft

May 15, 2014, 4:30 am
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Graphics via ChikaraPro.com
Chikara's penultimate big bad group before its temporary closure is announced for the next match to be unveiled for You Only Live Twice in Easton on May 25. Fans who remember the Bruderschaft des Kreuzes, however, will be getting only one member they will have expected to see. Ares returns, but he won't have Tim Donst by his side. Or Pinkie Sanchez. Or Daizee Haze, Lince Dorado, or Tursas. Obviously, Sara del Rey and Claudio Castagnoli won't be there. Not even Jakob Hammermeier, the annoying ring announcer turned surprisingly adept in-ring performer, will be by his side. Instead, he will bring Nøkken, a Norwegian water spirit who looks kinda like Tursas only with a bug face, and Milo Schnitzler, the puppet owner of Wrestling Is Cool. Not a whole lot is known about Ares' new companions except they give off a much creepier vibe than even Sanchez did at his sleaziest.

The group's opponents are the reigning and defending Kings of Trios, led by the two men who sent the BDK from Chikara for apparent good at High Noon in 2011. The Spectral Envoy, consisting of Frightmare, Hallowicked, and the great and devious UltraMantis Black, will lead the defenses against the Nordic invaders, who now are part of a far more sinister whole than they represented on the first go-around within the promotion.
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Throwback Thursday: Insane in the Cage

May 15, 2014, 11:15 am
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"Macho Man" Randy Savage was one of the most unpredictable, eccentric promos of all-time. Sometimes, I think his normal interviewer, Mean Gene Okerlund, didn't even know what he'd say or do before any scheduled segment they'd have together. However, one of the craziest pre-taped promo segments he ever took part in saw him as the most subdued participants. Then again, when the two people with you in the segment are Sensational Sherri Martel and Zeus, you could be Charles Manson and still be the sanest person there. Sherri climbed the cage for no reason, and Zeus projected all his rage (and possibly coke) fueled incoherence with cross-eyed fury, while the Macho King held court. As far as insane-people-talking-into-a-camera go, nothing on earth could have ever been finer.



This week's clip comes to us thanks to @FosterVsWorld, who chose Sensational Sherri as his wrestling personality of the week. He can be found on Twitter, musing about various sports and wrestling related things, as well as lamenting the general gridlock of living in the DMV area.
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Bryan's Surgery... A SUCCESS!

May 16, 2014, 6:50 am
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Thumbs up!
Photo Credit: WWE.com
Via WWE.com

You guys will all be thrilled to learn that Daniel Bryan's neck surgery was a success. You can read the details on the Dot Com article, but the overall tenor of the report was super positive. Obviously, the site isn't going to tip any kind of hand towards the story that WWE is trying to tell here. The Authority is set to "address the WWE World Heavyweight Championship situation" on RAW, and I would be utterly shocked if said announcement revealed that Bryan would have to retire at this point. WWE wouldn't have written Kane to beat the shit out of him last week if people thought he wasn't going to be back.

The funniest thing about the article, and about most news-type articles posted on the Dot Com, is that it is written like people within the company don't keep tabs on its performers. "...WWE.com has learned" is just a funny clause to read on a site owned and operated by the actual company. The things the company chooses to kayfabe and what it chooses to be out in the open with sometimes make me chuckle.
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Pick Three: A War, a Storm, and a Prom

May 16, 2014, 9:00 am
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Nothing says "pro wrestling" like a prom-themed show
Photo Credit: Kelly Kyle/Texas Anarchy
The weekend has arrived upon the calendar once again, and in addition to cookouts, spring cleaning, and other various things one does on a non-holiday weekend in May, a slate of pro wrestling shows has descended upon the arenas, VFWs, and bingo halls of the world. No matter where you live, you can probably find some kind of wrestling show going on in your area, but if you happen to be in New York, Phoenix, or Austin, well, you can go to one of the three best-looking shows happening this weekend. Furthermore, one of those shows is on Internet pay-per-view, and it so happens to feature a bunch of wrestlers who rarely frequent the States. Time to dive right in...

GOLD - Ring of Honor/New Japan Pro Wrestling War of the Worlds

The main event of the weekend could end up being one of the marquee shows of the entire year, as New Japan Pro Wrestling's superstars will clash with the finest that Ring of Honor has to offer. The epic clash of titans will take place at the Hammerstein Ballroom tomorrow night in New York, NY at 7:30 Eastern Daylight Time. If you can't be in the Big Apple for the show, fret not. Ustream will carry the show on iPPV. Reports of the stream being nearly flawless for Global Wars last week bode well for the broadcast this week. For a company that has had major streaming issues in the past, any good news is reason to celebrate.

Of course, the card itself on paper provides a huge reason to be excited. The double main event contains two huge Championship matches. The ROH World Championship will be on the line as Adam Cole will take on the timeless Jushin "Thunder" Liger, one of the most influential and storied junior heavyweight wrestlers in history. While I don't think Liger will escape with the Championship, I would love to see him win and get one last tour of America as ROH World Champ. Imagine the matches he could have with guys like Kevin Steen, Jay Briscoe, Bobby Fish, Tommaso Ciampa, or even Matt Hardy. But I'll take it one match at a time, because Cole should provide an excellent opponent for him as well. The other huge main event will pit IWGP World Heavyweight Champion AJ Styles against Michael Elgin with a third wrestler rumored to be added. This video seems to indicate that the most recent former Champion, Kazuchika Okada, will be added to the fray. He was originally scheduled to wrestle Cedric Alexander, but he was injured last week at the hands of the fiendish group of disgruntled veterans, The Decade. Speaking of fiendish groups, Styles will have the backing of the Bullet Club, which may not bode well for either Elgin or Okada here.

In the most controversial announced match, NJPW's longtime ace Hiroshi Tanahashi will step into the ring with Mike Bennett. Some have trashed the match as being beneath Tanahashi and not something that should be presented on a one-time-only card. However, Bennett has improved over the years to the point where he seems like a good opponent and a stiff test for New Japan's elite worker of the last decade. One of Tanahashi's peers and rivals, Shinsuke Nakamura, will sleaze his way over to America to take on Kevin Steen in a match I'm personally looking out for. Nakamura, in all his deviant glory, seems like the New Japan guy I'd gravitate to the most, and he's facing the best possible opponent in Steen, who hasn't really had a bad match since I started following him.

Three other titles will be on the line, two for ROH and one for New Japan. The IWGP Tag Team Championships will be up for grabs as Doc Gallows and Karl Anderson of the Bullet Club will defend against #DemBoys, the Briscoe Brothers. This match ought to be one of the most down home country brawlin' slobberknockers of the year. The ROH Tag Titles will be up for grabs as the Young Bucks will wager them against the team from which they won them, reDRagon (Bobby Fish and Kyle O'Reilly). And Jay Lethal puts his Television Championship on the line against one-half of the Time Splitters, KUSHIDA. Also booked for the show, ACH, Matt Taven, and Tommaso Ciampa team up to take on the trio of Takaaki Watanabe and the Forever Hooligans of Rocky Romero and Alex Koslov. Gedo and Jado take on The Decade's Roderick Strong and BJ Whitmer. And rounding out the show is a ROH vs. ROH showdown, pitting Caprice Coleman against Silas Young. This show, on paper, looks to be pretty darn strong, and it might be the last time you get to see NJPW guys on American soil. Well, at least the core of Tanahashi, Okada, Nakamura, Jado, Gedo, and KUSHIDA. Still, those names are pretty special in the realm of puroresu. I'd definitely think about getting this show long and hard if you can.

SILVER - International Wrestling Federation's Desert Storm

Pro wrestling out in the desert has been just that, a desert, for the longest time. Now that IWF is on the scene, however, the Phoenix area has its own super-indie to hang its hat upon. The first show drew rave reviews, and the company is back with another strong card on Sunday at 4 PM local time at the Celebrity Theatre. Six huge singles matches have already been signed, and several other talents not already booked are scheduled to appear.

The show is headlined by a TNA vs. Dragon Gate spectacular, Austin Aries battling Johnny Gargano. They may have clashed before when Aries trolled Dragon Gate USA, but now both have seen some major career progression. The stakes in this match are even higher than they would have been in 2010. In a high-flyer's dream match, Ricochet will square off against Chris Sabin. The former Motor City Machine Gun has developed somewhat of a meanstreak, but Ricochet is no stranger to rude behavior himself. The fireworks in this match may only be exceeded by another bout featuring two explosive young talents in Rich Swann vs. AR Fox. This match has happened before in a few places, but they do something different every time out, and you never know if you're watching Fox's last match the way he throws caution to the wind with his own body.

Matt Hardy will appear at this show to take on a semi-local boy in Joey Ryan, while Trent? takes the ring against Shelton Benjamin. In what qualifies as a HOSS FIGHT, Lance Hoyt ventures back from Japan to clash with the absolutely ripped Brian Cage. Also scheduled to appear on the show are the Reno Scum, Willie Mack, Tony Nese, and a tribute to the Ultimate Warrior.

BRONZE - Anarchy Championship Wrestling's Nothing Is As Real As a Dream

One of the most fun yearly traditions is the Pro Wrestling Prom put on by ACW. Everyone, from the talent to the fans to the staff, gets dressed up in their finest threads to go watch people throw themselves from the balcony, hit each other with chairs, and ruin said threads with blood. A great time is had by all, and that tradition this year happens on Sunday at the Mohawk in Austin, TX. You wanna get there when doors open at 5:15 PM local time so you can take pictures in your fancy duds, get a few drinks, and get to your seats in time for the Anarchy Televised pre-show.

Headlining the show this year is a match between two people I can guarantee won't be wearing tuxedos, mainly because I don't see them as the tuxedo-wearing type. In one corner is the psychopathic, tattooed, hardcore HOSS Scot Summers. In the other is the skewer-wielding, grungy firebrand Masada. If you're wearing a good suit or a gown, you might want to wear a poncho over it for this match. Shawn Vexx will be there to defend the Anarchy Championship against an opponent of his choosing, while Barbi Hayden and Athena clash for the Televised Championship in an evening gown match. Forget what you know about that kind of match from WWE. ACW evening gown matches are a tradition and are about as far away from the original issue as you can possibly get.

Su Yung and Angel Blue will team up to take on Ricky Romida and Jojo Bravo, the heaviest sumo in the land, in an "awkward dance partners" match, while Barrett Brown defends the World Hardcore Championship against the massive James Claxton. Sammy Guevara invades ACW to take on Thomas Shire, while Ricky Starks battles Carson. Finally, Paul London and Jack Jameson will defend the Tag Team Championships against Scotty and Steve.

Whether you go to one of these shows or if you frequent some other grand spectacle of professional grappling, you are supporting one of the finest arts the world has ever produced. These three shows are certainly not the only ones going on though. For example, the Pittsburgh area will play host to International Wrestling Cartel this weekend. SMASH has two shows going on in the Greater Toronto Area, featuring the promotional debut of Obariyon. On Point Wrestling has a show this weekend where YOU bring the weapons (as long as they're not glass), with the best option winning a prize. Still, those shows are only a fraction of what is being produced to advance the art this weekend, and this art cannot grow without your support though. Whether it's a WWE house show or a start-up promotion around the corner featuring dudes you've never heard of, head on out to a wrestling show this weekend. Who knows, your favorite wrestler or promotion may be out there. You just don't know it yet.
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The Polling Place: Prince Devitt, NXT, Bryan

May 16, 2014, 12:00 pm
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Prince Devitt is coming to WWE... maybe!
Photo Credit: Scott Finkelstein
Welcome to this week's edition of the Polling Place! First order of business is WWE's newest signing, Fergal "Prince" Devitt. The former NJPW superstar has reportedly come to terms according to The Site That Shall Not Be Linked. While that outfit's track record isn't the best, the rumors have been floating around for a long time, and would be a dandy addition to the roster. My question to you is what's your temperature on Devitt in WWE? How excited for him are you?


Devitt will be going to Orlando for a stint in developmental, and speaking of NXT, the territory has come under a bit of criticism lately. Recent acts imported from the subsidiary haven't performed up to expectation, and many are blaming the fact that it's too much like an indie promotion for these gimmicks to get over on a large-crowd basis. What is your opinion on NXT and its ability to create stars?


Finally, Daniel Bryan received surgery on his injured neck yesterday. While the surgery was a success, his availability for immediate participation in wrestling matches is unknown. He may not miss any time after all, but the growing fear is that he's going to be on the shelf for some amount of time. Assuming he's out until SummerSlam at the earliest, how do you proceed with the WWE World Heavyweight Championship?

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Twitter Request Line, Vol. (Spirit of ') 76

May 17, 2014, 7:50 am
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"I'M BACK FROM NOO YAWK"
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, especially around Friday night after Smackdown, and wait for the call. Anyway, time to go!

Not so extreme prediction/analysis. Vince Russo would get a job back with WWE before Jim Cornette would. But that statement is neither here nor there.

In regards to the financials themselves, I know losing 30% of his personal worth and the consultation firm saying the McMahon family should either clear house or sell is shocking, but I'm not panicking yet. Mainly, I don't know what these numbers mean, and odds are I bet a whole bunch of armchair analysts don't know for sure either. However, I will start to get concerned if one of two things happen:

1 - The Network jumps sharply in price.

or

2 - The Network goes away.

Until then, I'm just gonna sit back and watch what happens while the camera's rolling. Life's too short to worry about other people's money.

KICK THE CAN

Whatever Tom Zenk is doing right now is probably of absolutely no interest to anyone who isn't blood-related to him. Hell, I bet people who do care about his well-being don't give a shit what he's doing right now. So I will give this completely falsified, fantastical account of what he's been doing since he retired from pro wrestling. Please do not take this as truth. I'm looking at you, Darren Rovell.

"When Tom Zenk left the public eye, he looked for a new challenge. Sports bored him. He had hunted everything except the most dangerous game, which for the record is feral velociraptor. The Z-Man has several human pelts in a secret room in his compound in Haakon County, South Dakota. He decided in 2007 that he would do something no other man has ever done and survived. He would venture to North Sentinel Island. When he arrived there, the natives tried to lance spears through his still rippling musculature, but he deftly avoided each one. The natives begrudgingly gave Zenk their respect. His last known contact with the outside world was in 2009, when he sent a telegram to Kevin Sullivan detailing how he was going to teach these [racial slur redacted] how to fight in a plan to conquer some more land. The words were incoherent, as he'd spent so much time immersed among the natives that he seemed to have forgotten English. However, satellite imagery from as recent as 2012 showed Zenk waving his penis in the air, as if he knew he was being watched..."

Where does someone go after this trainwreck of a feud with Cena though? That question is forefront. He can't go forward without turning face and feuding with The Authority (which all told isn't a bad idea). He can't go down the card unless he's just eating souls until he's ready for a better story against Cena (or Bryan? PUNK?). I almost think he should be the one to win the WWE World Heavyweight (or Interim) Championship if Bryan isn't ready to come back in short order. But because things like card position don't bother me as much, I would let Wyatt target Antonio Cesaro as a means for the latter to turn good. WWE is so goddamn dumb sometimes, y'know?

He's been admitted to the Intensive Care Unit just by you asking this question, so the outlook doesn't appear to be all that good.

You're most certainly not, and that feeling is perfectly normal. It's just a sign that you have a mind of your own. I'm not saying people who DO like Bryan are part of some insidious hivemind, because said hivemind does not exist (remember kids, the only thing the IWC is is a wrestling promotion in Pittsburgh, and it's running a show tonight!). But I know peer pressure doesn't cease to exist in high school, and if you don't like a certain personality, people can ostracize you from conversation. Even though I disagree with your distaste for Bryan, I encourage you to let that flag fly. Wrestling fandom would be boring if everyone liked the exact same goddamn thing.

I wonder what Jigsaw and The Shard have to say about that purchase, to be honest. Wrestling Is Fun! has already imported the Tag World Grand Prix from its mother promotion, so what if the belts are the next hand-me-down. Or what if Chikara and WIF! are becoming part of one greater, shared continuity? IT'S ALL CONNECTED! I N F O G R A P S

He has a title reign in him, I think. If he gets called up now, it won't be because he has nothing left to do, but because WWE needs a babyface in the wake of Daniel Bryan's injury. In short, he should totally beat Adrian Neville for the title and have a three-four month reign defending the title against EVERYONE. All the fans would win in that scenario.

Nothing is wrong with trading offense, but sometimes, booking such a lopsided match only to have the rookie/victim win with a flash pin is good storytelling. The question is whether that booking is doing Paige any favors? Or for that matter, is repeating the template of the match where she won the title in the first place smart? I'm afraid that WWE just is never going to be interested in crafting any kind of main event story for women, and that their ceiling in the company will be following the tired old template of how the Intercontinental and United States Championships are normally booked.

ROUND 1:
Batista d. Kofi Kingston
Dolph Ziggler d. Bray Wyatt (by DQ)
Randy Orton d. Rey Mysterio
Roman Reigns vs. Dean Ambrose vs. Seth Rollins is a triple DQ via storyline deus ex machina
Antonio Cesaro d. Triple H (via shenanigans from The Shield)
John Cena d. Damien Sandow
Rob van Dam d. Jack Swagger
Kane d. R-Truth

Batista d. Ziggler
Orton gets a bye
Cesaro d. Cena (thanks to interference from the Wyatts)
van Dam d. Kane

Batista vs. Orton turns into a massive clusterfuck when both argue who should lay down for whom. The Shield and Triple H all get involved, and it turns into a massive brawl. The match gets restarted with everyone virtually dead, and Orton crawls over to get the pin on Batista.
Cesaro d. van Dam

Payback! Randy Orton defeats Cesaro in an epic match where Cesaro looks like he has it won on several different occasions. Paul Heyman tries to get involved, but it backfires, leading to Orton hitting a RKO and winning the Interim Championship. Afterwards, Cesaro fires Heyman, causing Zeb Colter to come out to gloat. Cesaro chases him off too and proclaims he can represent himself.

Why go with just one?



NES: Hard to choose between The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Bros. 3. Flip a coin and go with SMB3, if just because I may havecreated a religionbased on itlast night.

SNES: Another hard choice. Four games could conceivably take this mantel, but if I were hard pressed, I'd have to with what I have deemed the best game of all-time for any system, right? The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past it is.

GAME BOY: Pokemon Gold and Silver in a lay-up.

N64: Hard to choose for this system too, since it has so many iconic games. Pound for pound, the N64 may have been the best system the company has ever produced. Anyway, I'm gonna go with Super Mario 64 here because it perfectly captured the Mario spirit in 3D, had a BUNCH of stuff to do, and was fun as hell.

GAME BOY ADVANCE: Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire by default, since that (and Leaf Green) was the only game I really played for it.

GAMECUBE: This one is another really difficult choice. Do I go with the multiplayer bliss of Super Smash Bros. Melee? Is my favorite first-person shooter, Metroid Prime the choice here? After some thought, I think I have to go with The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker. The sailing didn't really bother me at all, especially since the positives were off the charts. It's a visually beautiful game with a killer score and perhaps the best combination of graphics and "stuff" to do of any of the 3D Zelda games.

NINTENDO DS: Pokemon Black and White gets the nod here. The Zelda games were kinda recursive fetch quests. Fun, but not nearly on the level of what they could have been. New Super Mario Bros. was a really fun callback to the 2D Mario games, but I'm a mark for Pokemon. Plus, Generation V had the absolute best story attached to any Pokemon game.

WII: Super Smash Bros. Brawl, although it gets stiff competition from Super Mario Galaxy.

3DS: Pokemon dominated the handheld systems until now. I have to give the nod to The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds slightly over Pokemon X and Y. Generation VI so far is my favorite iteration of Pokemon because of the stunning visuals and the improvements in gameplay, but Nintendo gave the world a spiritual sequel to the best game ever while making it completely feel new and different.

I haven't played the WiiU yet, so pass on that.


If Bryan and Punk could headline WrestleMania and hold the WWE Championship for 434 days respectively, then the sky has to be the limit for Prince Devitt, right? I won't predict a Mania headline spot for him just yet, but I think he can at least get into the midcard quite easily and have some memorable feuds and matches. He can make some money in WWE.

KENTA's the tricky one to predict, however, because WWE has never produced a Japanese-born superstar with any success. The closest it came was Yokozuna, and he was a Samoan pretending to be Japanese. For whatever reason, the company seems to be afraid of putting any kind of push behind one for reasons of language. I think that mindset tends to be asinine, since wrestling is a universal language. TAKA Michinoku and Great Sasuke were a memorable part of one of the three best WWE pay-per-view events ever just by running game and doing nothing else. But no, KAIENTAI had to be given gross stereotypes that didn't play with the audience as much as WWE had planned.

Still, since a lot of things are changing within the company, maybe KENTA has some hope to succeed where Michinoku, Sho Funaki, Jimmy Wang Yang, Tajiri (although he had mild success, to be fair), Ultimo Dragon, and most recently, Yoshi Tatsu were failed. If he gets to go out and ball in the ring, maybe the office will see that CHOPPY CHOPPY PEE PEE isn't the route to go for Asian superstars.

"Underrated" is such a loaded term. Who is underrating him? He's well-loved in Twitter circles where I run. And honestly, he wasn't lighting the world on fire OUTSIDE of 3MB. Maybe his entire lot in life on a WWE roster is to be in a super-entertaining comedy jobber gimmick and make everyone else look good. I wouldn't mind seeing him get a bigger push, because I'm not sure you know what you have with a guy until you give him a legit shot. But he could have suffered a far worse fate than being in 3MB, which again, I find to be awesomely enthralling for what it is.

We're all gonna die.

In all seriousness, I am stoked for Knuckles. She has been by far the best part of both secret shows I've been to this year. I don't know whether she showed this much charisma in her IWA Mid-South deathmatch days or not, but right now, she could carry any promotion at the top. The extra-added positive is that she and LuFisto ought to have one of the most brutally entertaining matches of the year at Uncensored Rumble.

I can't be sure until I know how injured he still is/how much recovery time he needs before getting back into a wrestling ring. But assuming he won't be back for a couple of months, I would go with the Interim Championship tournament I booked above. If wrestling can learn one thing from UFC, it's that titles don't need to be stripped due to injury, and that ready-made matches can be silver linings to be viewed in dark clouds.

I am a bad person, because I have not read a book from cover to cover in years. But I would recommend David Shoemaker's book if just because the parts of it that I have read so far are entertaining and somewhat informative (I know people who dispute the things that Shoemaker has written, but I can't agree or disagree without doing my own research). I do not know any books written about the indies, however. Again, I am a bad, illiterate person.

Jumping off from the above answer to the previous question, I have never read Of Mice and Men. Hahstag-sad.

Yeah, Breeze is the superstar who feels like he is in limbo right now. Maybe he could win the NXT Championship, or maybe he could get brought up. But man, I'm afraid for him if/when he gets to the main roster. The entire debate on how NXT is failing or not failing WWE misses the point that NXT is booked far better than the parent company for the most part. Breeze in NXT is great because the folks running the show know how to handle such a gimmick. Will he get the same attention on the main roster, or will Vince McMahon be all like "HAHA SELFIES LET's JUST MAKE HIM A DUDE WHO TAKES SELFIES ALL THE TIME AND NO FEUDS OR ANYTHING ELSE TO COME FROM IT."

Nope. I don't understand what's going on with this whole deal, so I am not going to comment. Sorry.

I loved the Gangstas in ECW because every match, they'd roll up to the ring with a shopping cart full of PLUNDAH. The weapons were whimsical and random and awesome, ranging from the stop signs and kendo sticks to the absurd like a Nintendo Entertainment System. But my favorite weapon that they'd pull out, well, that New Jack would pull out, was the model airplane. He'd take the plane, fly it around in the air with his hands like he was a derpy pre-teen, and then smash it on his victim's head. I always popped at that.

Like I said above, while I won't concretely predict him to headline WrestleMania or hold the WWE World Championship, but I certainly can see him doing both those things. Worst case scenario? He gets saddled with a Sheamus' best friend gimmick and doesn't get to wrestle all that much, a la El Torito. Mascarita Dorada was legitimately one of the best wrestlers in the world before getting to WWE. The fact that his first showcase singles match was a few weeks ago against Hornswoggle (which in itself isn't bad but c'mon now on the timing) is disgraceful.


Like was written above, "underrated" and "overrated" are such loaded terms, and I think folks sometimes like to conflate them with "over-" or "underpushed" in a sense. Malenko was #1 in the goddamn PWI 500 one year despite being nothing more than a United States Championship level dude in WCW. And if you wanna know the reason why Malenko never got above that level, it was because he was one step above Lance Storm in personality. No, scratch that, Lance Storm at least was able to show ironic self-deprecation with his "If I can be serious for a moment" shtick. Malenko was fine where he was.

I didn't get to watch as many games as I would have liked, to be honest, but them's be the breaks when you have a two year-old at home who dominates the TV when the games are usually on. However, the games I actually watched were really fun. I'm looking forward to being able to watch the World Cup this year and actually knowing what's going on rather than just seeing what I used to see when I happened to be in the same room when soccer was on. Following the league also gave me a better appreciation for early weekend morning Footy Twitter. All in all, I had a good time.

If you consume him the way WWE wants you to, then sure, he's awful. But if you imagine him like Spinner Dunn from Death to Smoochy, i.e. a guy who has taken too many punches to the head and has the mentality befitting such trauma, then he becomes way more enjoyable. Seriously, a brain-damaged musclehead whose main offense is using his butt? MONEY.

The main conundrum here is that WWE introduced the new WWE Championship belt BEFORE it decided to unify that title with the World Heavyweight Championship. The company spent all that money (which for WWE might not be too big a deal to be honest) and made such a big deal out of the new title that replacing it right away might not be the best option. Then again, the Unified Championship design it introduced in 2002 lasted only a couple of years before it was replaced by the John Cena Spinner Championship. So who knows.
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On Tyson Kidd and the Need for Managers

May 23, 2014, 10:30 am
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The match will probably be good, but the build has sucked thanks to Kidd's sub-Farmer mic skills
Photo Credit: WWE.com
I don't mean to step on Butch's gig here, but something is bothering me right proper about the top program on NXT right now. The number one contender to Adrian Neville's NXT Championship makes the Champ look like Ric Flair on the microphone. Sending Tyson Kidd to developmental to find his groove and get back into game shape after his injury was a good idea. However, whoever decided to put a live mic in front of his face deserves to be fired.

Basically, Kidd has the wild intensity of a Psycho Sid, which would be great if he was anything more than the 1% as coherent. Kidd sounds like he's either throwing out the most generic of platitudes or he's saying things that have no bearing on reality. He spits the worst possible game, to the point where he may have singlehandedly given the fans a viable replacement for the "WHAT?" chant on last night's episode of NXT. The only FACT I came away with was that Kidd should never be handed a live microphone ever again.

It's not like the NXT bookers and agents had to send Kidd out blind. The Performance Center has a fully-functioning promo school. If the plan was to put Kidd in the title match at Takeover, an idea which I am not opposed to in general, then why weren't his mic skills vetted before he was sent out on a Network show to build to that match with his words? I hate to keep cycling back to ECW and Paul Heyman, but if Kidd were making his rounds in the iconic Philly indie in the late '90s, he never would have been given a mic. Instead, he would have been given a proxy to talk for him, someone like Shane Douglas (as a member of the Triple Threat) or Cyrus as a manager.

Kidd's strengths are obviously in the ring. A great wrestling program features wrestlers whose strengths are played up while weaknesses are hidden. WWE has guys who can string words together that elicit reactions from crowds that are not mocking. Sure, Heyman might be slumming it to go down to NXT (and a compelling argument exists that the only person he helps anymore is himself, which I might subscribe to), but what about Sylvester Lefort? What about Enzo Amore? Vickie Guerrero?

Not every wrestler can do it all, and just because a television show is dedicated to the travails of the developmental system doesn't mean wrestlers should get to use it to work out deficiencies in their games, ESPECIALLY in the main feud for the next big live supershow. The Performance Center should be where the kinks are worked out, and if what Kidd is doing with that mic is considered ready for prime time, then WWE has way lower standards than even I figured for promotional vignettes.
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Fifteen Years Gone

May 23, 2014, 1:30 pm
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Fifteen years ago today, at the Kemper Arena in Kansas City, MO, Owen Hart died in the most senseless wrestling stunt that was ever produced. He might still be here today if not for near-criminal negligence and the audacity of Vince McMahon of putting a man in the rafters to rappel down in the first place. Hart left behind two children and a grieving wife, the latter who has finally come to terms with WWE on use of his image and footage. She is a stronger person than I could hope to be. The night after he died, RAW was dedicated to him. Several WWE employees spoke into the camera about him. The following video contains the reactions from Mick Foley, Bradshaw, Mark Henry, Droz, Triple H, Chyna, and Dave Hebner. Their reactions, even today, still feel like they carry more weight than anything I could say or write. Rest in peace, Owen.

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Best Coast Bias: Ennui The People

May 26, 2014, 8:20 am
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The signature match for Takeover - at least on paper
Photo Credit: WWE.com
Behold, the good guy: a foreign-born cruiserweight who's lackluster on the mic but good in the ring, spending time in Full Sail to build up their resume and hopefully get some eyeballs on them in the form of establishing themselves as a main roster level talent when the time comes.

Now, behold his opponent -- and here we dive into a hall made out of funhouse mirrors, as if a cloning machine got to 86% and went "Screw it, good enough."

It's hard to tell where Adrian Neville begins and Tyson Kidd ends sometimes, and bringing them together for the second signature NXT show Takeover next week just highlights and exacerbates the problem of having them go in against each other for the Big X come the last Thursday of the month.  So it came to pass that after the main event showcase that had the Champion delivering the Red Arrow to Curt Hawkins, having kicked out of the Prince of Queens' finish suplex, that Tyson Kidd came out.  While his promo wasn't Shakespearian, it was the next worst thing: a lot of sound and fury signifying not much.

The Kidd resume is well-known by most of the NXT viewership, covering pretty much a decade with "Tag team specialist" at one end and the "guy married to Nattie" on the other.  Him leaning on things like having wrestled on RAW and at WrestleMania not only underscores the gaping maw in his CV but it's like calling Guy Fieri and Jiro industry peers.  Technically, it's true -- underscored emphatically by Kidd yelling FACT after each point in an attempt at a new catchphrase that exploded on the runway at worst and a very subtle attempt at heeling in Neville's stomping grounds at best.  But that's a slope so slippery you might as well have the finals of a shuffleboard attempt on it.  Neville did the babyface fighting Champion promo, and that was incrementally better, but then buttoned his speaking time by saying Nattie was going to be the one in the family walking out of Full Sail with gold. The crowd turned into Jerry Springer's and somewhere in San Diego the cringe almost made a dent in the Richter.  

It would be different if Neville was going to be working as a black hat, or if Tyson was married to Eva Marie or something, but all it served to do was be a cheap shot to somebody you ostensibly are doing the All Babyfaces Go To Heaven mutual respect build with the only segment that you have to get it over. The slight on Nattie, especially after she'd just tapped out Sasha Banks in the match before his and spent more time in the ring doing it was so much small beer it might as well have been sponsored by the Silver Bullet.  Both Tyson and Nattie getting shots at two of the three major belts in Full Sail underscores the fact that with the Network trying to get more fans inside the NXT tent they're using the successful ratings from their Exclamation Point offshoot to leverage it into giving two full-time members of the Full Sail roster in Neville and Charlotte wins over main members of the roster to give them a talking point in June.  You're reading this, you know the one: "they may be here in NXT, but they've gone in against former WWE Champions and won".  Something along those lines.  But again, this goes back to the industry peer thing.  JTG and John Cena are both members of the main roster but not even Stevie Wonder would confuse one for the other.

You may recognize the main roster also as the thing Bo Dallas is now a full member of, having been greeted by a Big Ending after accidentally going into the turnbuckle he exposed.  That's the thing about irony sometimes.  It's so damn ironic.  It didn't stop Continuity Bear from doing his dance as a result, though.  It was hilarious watching Dallas proclaim himself Mr. NXT as he verbally contoured the petard that he would similarly visit upon himself at the tail end of his final Full Sail match, and the Artist Formerly Known As Langston was clearly galvanized to be back in front of a crowd that needed five just as badly as he used to.  Rejoicing over Dallas' downfall gave the crowd Steam enough to metaphorically kiss him goodbye.  Yet lest you think they couldn't keep up to their usual standards, this was the same crowd chanting We Don't Like You during the longest reigning NXT Champion's pre-match inspoporn of a speech.  Moving from a fun Beyonceish to the left to the left of suggesting en masse that "Bo, leave!" and going full preschooler by responding to Bo's exhortations of "You leave!" and "Why are you still here?" by repeating them back at him after the man had kicked the stairs and hurt himself got them the Troll Game On Point badge, assuming that they didn't have it already.

It was probably the highlight of the show matchwise, since Camacho getting intentionally counted out against Adam Rose wasn't going to be and the limitations of the main have already been noted.  But in storyline development, the biggest stroke might've been Sami Zayn and Tyler Breeze exchanging words to set up their match at Takeover to go from assumed to assured.  More to the point, it's now a #1 contendership match with the winner not being a fait accompli between two of the best guys on the roster and both being able to give Neville the sort of match in execution for putting over his title reign that it's assumed the eventual win over Kidd would provide.  Fact.

Again, Takeover looks to have a wide repository of things to look forward to -- three title matches with the Ascension going in against Los Lucha in the bypassed lane this week setup wise, and Breeze and Zayn going against each other in what should be the best match of the show.  But after the blow-the-door-off-the-hinges success from Arrival Takeover's got a high, high bar to clear.  And the guy wrestling the good version of his evil twin for the X may just turn the good into the enemy of the near perfect in this case.
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Search

Instant Feedback: The Formula

May 26, 2014, 8:50 pm
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Not even Bray Wyatt's way with words can mask the awful creative direction of WWE
Photo Credit: WWE.com
Once upon a time, three hours wasn't a lot of time to fill. RAW would zip by most weeks because wrestlers like Sheamus, Alberto del Rio, Antonio Cesaro, Randy Orton, The Shield, and especially Daniel Bryan would have their working boots on, go for anywhere between 10 and 20 minutes a pop, and limit the time that WWE Creative would have to produce scripted content for Vince McMahon to angrily yell at for needing another rewrite for not being nebulous or samey enough for his liking. The calendar year 2013 was one for the ages, a masterclass in televised wrestling that started with a bonkers TLC match between CM Punk and Ryback (my, how things have changed) and ended with Bryan and Luke Harper putting an exclamation point on the frame.

But the company has gotten away from that formula. Creative and McMahon are in control of more and more of the segments on the show. The worst parts of 1999-2001 have come back in the form of long-winded promo segments of varying providence without much forward momentum on story or character development. I mean, I love hearing Bray Wyatt talk, but what has he exactly said over the last few weeks that progressed from what he was preaching before WrestleMania? I give him all the credit in the world for making his speeches seem different, but he and John Cena are being done dirty by the storytelling. Bryan's arc with his real life injury playing into his reign as Champion has elicited some wavering output from himself in response to expert-level trolling from Stephanie McMahon, but each step to the angle has seemed like it was written hastily on a cocktail napkin at the bar right before the writers were set to show up at the arena.

And the wrestling that backed it up was not there. It hasn't been there since before WrestleMania. Obviously, Bryan's injury hampers things, but throwing Cesaro in there against Rob van Dam is a waste of a resource. Not giving matches like Sin Cara/Bo Dallas, Emma/Alicia Fox, or even Drew McIntyre/El Torito more than a couple of minutes is anathema. Stacking the deck against Sheamus and Alberto del Rio by putting them against each other yet again is not acting in the best interests of the flow of the show. Granted, folks like myself and Dylan Hales might appreciate the fact that Sheamus is working at ace-levels right now, or that he and del Rio never wrestle the same match twice for better or worse, but it doesn't help the atmosphere of malaise on the overall narrative.

What WWE has done in the span of two months has taken a tried-and-true formula and thrown it in the trash for whatever reason. Granted, Bryan can't wrestle every week like he was over the last year because he's the Champion and needs his body to be protected so injuries like his current neck maladies don't happen every other month. But when the roster is as big as WWE's and full of quality wrestlers from the upper echelons down to the curtain jerkers (fuck it, Zack Ryder and Curt Hawkins can both fill out an 8-minute low-card match admirably), it has no reason to have Wyatt cut the same fucking promo every week, or even worse, to have Paul Heyman do the same goddamn shtick he does, no matter how entertaining it is, at the bereft of Cesaro's development as a character.

Three hours is not a lot of time to fill when wrestling is both plentiful and good. Hell, three hours is not a lot of time to fill if the creative braintrust of the company cranks out stories that have rising action, climax, and falling action to go from one pay-per-view to the next and over the course of an entire year. However, three hours is a goddamn eternity when everything is in a holding pattern. RAW tonight should have just been Cena and The Miz talking about Heroes for Hire or WWE running non-stop bumpers honoring the troops on Memorial Day. Frankly, that kind of jingoistic pap might have been a bit more satisfying than the mail-in job given tonight. Sadly, tonight's show wasn't too far off from others in the past.

The formula worked in 2013, and no reasons exist as to why it can't in 2014. Especially if Creative isn't so creative, the roster is built to be a wrestling show.
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BO-nus Footage

May 27, 2014, 5:10 am
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Photo Credit: WWE.com

Bo Dallas made his debut on Smackdown last week, but as with anything that happened on the B-show, WWE is sure to present it again on RAW, sometimes with nothing changed, because even the braintrust in the company know that no one important watches Smackdown. My only regret is that his match with Sin Cara last night didn't get nearly enough time to develop. Yeah, part of it lies in the fact that ever since Hunico took the mask full-time, he's been killing it, but man, Dallas has a real chance to connect with the crowd if he's allowed to really revel in his shtick. I know the standard mantra for NXT-to-WWE gimmicks is "not able to get over in a bigger room," but if Dallas doesn't get popular (or super hated), then it's not going to be his fault. He's money.
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The Past Is Prologue: Total Divas, Season 2, Penultimate Episode

May 27, 2014, 6:00 am
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Bryan and Bella (and Josie!) get prepared for their wedding
Photo Credit: WWE.com
In the cliche "this is how your life goes" sector, the wedding is expressed as an important step to the process. I, of course, find that cliche to be potentially toxic, as marriage can be a terrifying thing especially when mixed with self-doubt, insecurity, and not wanting to feel alone despite the realization that being together could be far worse. I am the son of this type of home. My sister and I turned out fine, but at the same time, the marriage clearly didn't. My mom and dad were terrible matches for each other and ultimately my dad played the cliche abandoned father.

Without going too much into personal details, marriage is a painful thing in my family. I've wondered if my own self-doubt has averted me from even attempting relationships, much less the fear that marriage only leads to court battles over children, revelations of a poor lifestyle, or even just the pure terror of raising a child. I have no doubts that people don't go through this thought process, however, not the least of which would be the main patriarch of this site, who seems to be in a happy marriage and is a loving father for all I know. Marriage just kind of makes me fearful, though.

Funnily enough, I say this as I'm referring to the two part finale that documents the wedding of Bryan Danielson and Brianna Garcia in as much as two seemingly genuine people that actually care about each other and would not emotionally or physically destroy the other. I mean, they even made their own adorable couples' Facebook page. They clearly like what wrestling has brought them, but see themselves as more interesting than that. Brie has a throwaway line in the episode where she asks what song would be perfect for the wedding dance, offhandedly mentioning Blitzen Trapper in likely the first and last ever mention the beloved alt country band will ever receive on WWE television.

In that extent, I would be happy to see them turn out well. But even the most graceful of couples can have something that doesn't work out. I don't want to be a Debbie Downer about this. The actual wedding (which naturally is concurrent with the Payback pay-per-view and the storyline wrench that Brie could be fired and probably could easily be in a situation where she is fired in storyline by the company that will air her wedding) airs this Sunday and I suppose it will go as smoothly as expected, with the assumption that John Cena will be told Nikki Bella was once married (spoiler: he won't give a shit), Summer Rae will change everything that has made her a sympathetic flawed character (spoiler: she's just one of the girls now), and Eva Marie will come out to K-Kwik's "Gettin' Rowdy" and I will be so happy (spoiler: I'm lying, that will never happen).

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By the way, I can't promise anything, but I'd love to use this entry to call out some of the other folks that have recapped this program for a Skype chat or podcast recording or something. I'd like Kayfabe Comedy and the like to be involved. If that doesn't happen, Kayfabe Comedy wanted me to do fan fiction with him of Total Divas being like Twin Peaks. Either way, next week's entry won't be the very last time I'm talking Total Divas.
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The People's Poop Goblin: Chikara You Only Live Twice Review

May 27, 2014, 7:30 am
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Meet your newest favorite wrestler...
Photo Credit: Zia Hiltey
In the TH Style. Check back to Smart Mark Video for DVD/mp4/VOD availability.

Highlights:
  • Tursas returned to Chikara as a member of the newly-reformed BDK, helping the trio defeat the Spectral Envoy with Ragnarok on Frightmare.
  • The debuting "Smooth Sailing" Ashley Remington defeated Chuck Taylor with the Lasso from El Paso.
  • Mike Quackenbush was named as the new Director of Fun.
  • The Batiri defeated the Odditorium by disqualification when Sinn Bodhi blatantly kicked Kodama in the groin.
  • Juan Francisco de Coronado turned Jervis Cottonbelly's mask around and hit him with an Everest German suplex for the win.
  • The Throwbacks survived the four-corner elimination tag match, last eliminating the Pieces of Hate. Mark Angelosetti got the deciding pin on The Shard after a Certified HOSS™ delay superplex.
  • Jimmy Jacobs defeated Archibald Peck thanks to distraction from his goons wearing plague masks and a leaping ace crusher from the corner.
  • The Colony: Xtreme Force defeated The Colony after Missile Assault Ant hit Fire Ant with a lawn dart on an exposed turnbuckle. After the match, The Colony reclaimed their stolen 2011 King of Trios medals.
  • King of Trios was announced to return this year at the Easton Funplex.
  • Icarus defeated Eddie Kingston with the Chikara Special to become the second ever Grand Champion of Chikara.
  • After the main event, The Flood came out to attack the combined forces of Chikara. Soldier Ant and Delirious were in their possession, brainwashed to attack their former mates. The final big bad, the Titan of Titor, appeared and "killed" Kobald.

General Observations:
  • Apparently, I missed a trios match during the Expansion Match pre-show, where the Baltic Siege took on the Bloc Party, with a new member representing the former Soviet state of Georgia (not the Peach State of Georgia) who was a complete rib on Sean Waltman. Such is life.
  • Gavin Loudspeaker opened the show with this greeting: "It's my privilege to say.... WE'RE BACK!!" I missed you, Chikara.
  • The Funplex was SWARMING with people. I think the crowd doubled the population of Easton for this show.
  • Ares was the first wrestler out for the entire show, and he debuted his new moustache. It looked like he was trying to do bad Tom Selleck cosplay. Conversely, what better way to get the Chikara crowd to hate him even more.
  • UltraMantis Black opened his promo from the aisle by invoking his team's status as the reigning King of Trios, which then brought out the return of another King of Trios winner, Tursas, to attack the Envoy. I think Chikara meant to drive the foreshadowing home for the big announcement later in the show.
  • I may secretly have to root for the BDK, because the group has the POWER OF HOSS. Both Nøkken and Tursas both looked spry and strong during this match. The highlight for either guy happened near the beginning, when Nøkken grabbed Frightmare in a headlock/sleeper and just swung him around like a rag doll. Oh baby. HOSS ME BABY.
  • Hallowicked and Frightmare looked like they were about to bust out a new finisher for the team until they were rudely interrupted. However, the silver lining was the return of RAGNAROK to Chikara. Still the most impressive triple-team finisher I've ever seen, although to be fair, I've only ever seen two other ones (and one of them is The Shield's kinda lame triple powerbomb that's really just a Roman Reigns powerbomb).
  • Bonus match! And one of the competitors was the debuting Dalton Castle, except his name here wasn't Dalton Castle, it was "Smooth Sailing" Ashley Remington. He came down to the ring in a captain's hat (possibly the same one that belongs to Nick Ando) and a lass around each of his arms. Chikara rebrands can be hit or miss, especially when no masks are involved, but right from the start, I was in love with this character.
  • Remington dropkicked Chuck Taylor off the apron, which led to Taylor pouting around the outside of the ring as he's wont to do. However, like a perfect sailing gentleman, Remington held the ropes open for him to invite him back into the ring.
  • Taylor had Remington in the corner choking him, and after he broke the hold, he turned around to referee Justice Jon Barber and shouted "I DON'T KNOW THE RULES."
  • After Remington got the win, his lasses came back out with a fruit basket, which he presented to Taylor. That act sealed it. Ashley Remington is my new favorite wrestling character in perpetuity.
  • Robbie Ellis was formally introduced as Chikara's new owner, and he nearly immediately gave the floor to the new Director of Fun, Mike Quackenbush. Quack gave an impassioned speech about how Chikara was each and every single one of the people in attendance. He even named names, including the wonderfully gifted and insanely talented Danielle Matheson. He also shouted out one of the writers here. I just don't remember which one. He couldn't have been that important, to be honest.
  • Haha, the Batiri got streamers for their entrance instead of toilet paper. They've made it!
  • The Odditorium/Batiri match was the first taste I got of Qefka the Quiet in the ring. As fate would have it, he's a wrestling mime, which is the easiest heel heat-drawing gimmick in the history of the world. I would bet the Young Bucks would be cheered over him.
  • Both Kobald and Sinn Bodhi really stood out as leaders for their teams. This match was the first time the Batiri actually in a position to garner cheers from the crowd, and while a lot of it had to do with their affiliation with Chikara, Kobald did a great job stoking the fires and working as the head of his trio. Conversely, Bodhi's methodical pacing and sheer brutality gave his seemingly silly band of carnies an air of legitimacy.
  • In the brouhaha after the disqualification was called, Kobald gave Qefka the Royal Butterfly, which was almost a sweet tribute to the wrestler the Batiri tormented before she went off to train Divas in the land of Full Sail. Even poop demons miss the Queen of Wrestling.
  • I wish I could recap what Juan Francisco de Coronado said before his match with Jervis Cottonbelly, but the crowd drowned every single word he said out. By far he got the loudest heat of the night.
  • Of all the matches, the JDFC/Cottonbelly match was the one I thought should have gotten more time. Those two wrestlers really get the balance between working the crowd, developing character, and actually working the match. I really liked what I saw, even if it felt truncated.
  • Man, Dasher Hatfield got pretty jacked in the last couple of months, didn't he?
  • Shane Matthews actually got both members of the Gekido in the match into a Boston crab simultaneously, which got the biggest reaction of the elimination tag match until the very end.
  • After 3.0 got eliminated, I almost morbidly wanted to see the Throwbacks get tossed just to see if any friction would develop between the two factions from The Flood. I still think Jigsaw could be a Sting-type figure/sleeper agent for Chikara.
  • Hatfield probably spent like 90% of the match as the face-in-peril. Seriously, he took a gosh-darn beating.
  • Mark Angelosetti with his delayed top rope superplex became the most diminutive member of the Certified HOSS™ club. Seriously, I don't care if The Shard was the only person in the match smaller than he was. That feat took THE POWER OF HOSS.
  • Situational no-selling gets overused in wrestling a lot, but I think one spot where it always fits is if it's used in reaction to being spat on. Archibald Peck's seething anger at getting a loogie from Jimmy Jacobs was among the best uses of it.
  • Something I found quite refreshing - the Peck/Jacobs match was the first one on the entire show that featured one of those gratuitous strike-trading spots meant to get the crowd getting into a "BOO!... YAY!" chorus.
  • However, Peck went crazy with the DDTs and hit 10 of them on Jacobs for a transitional spot. Jake "The Snake" Roberts got a severe chill down his spine (and not because he spent the weekend in Canada either).
  • WORKER ANT HAD A HARD HAT! YESSSSSSSSS!
  • Missile Assault Ant worked his Twitter gimmick of proclaiming his name with exclamation points into multiple spots during the match. The best instance happened when he had Fire Ant in the corner hitting him with European uppercuts to the tune of MISSILE! ASSAULT! ANT!
  • The double-and-triple team offense in this match was on point from both teams. Seriously, nothing in the last five years is as consistently entertaining as Chikara's multi-person tag matches. I'm getting to the point where the best possible dream match in my mind is The Shield taking on either The Colony, the Spectral Envoy, or even the Baltic Siege.
  • Referee impartiality is an underrated aspect of any match. One thing I hate in WWE is that if a ref doesn't see something happen, but sees the aftermath, he calls for the match reversal even though he never saw the action take place. Dan Yost saw that the middle turnbuckle pad was removed, but he didn't see the actual removal process. So he didn't reverse the decision of the match. Sometimes, the best way to advance a story isn't to have the heels perform outlandish deeds of nefarious villainy, but for the faces to be undone by procedural bureaucracy.
  • The true Ants got their King of Trios medals back after the match though, which is reassuring.
  • Eddie Kingston got a barrage of toilet paper before the Grand Championship match started. He got the toilet paper that used to be reserved for The Batiri. KOBALD 4 GRAND CHAMP!
  • Kingston stepped to young lady in the crowd, and she did not back down whatsoever. That fan has way more gumption than even I would have had, seeing as how I cowered from Kingston's death glare at a Wrestling Is Cool show last year. It just goes to show that courage is not determined by gender whatsoever.
  • The stupid Botchamania fan who goes to every Chikara show in the area actually successfully got the fans to chant fat-shaming shit at Kingston during the match. I have to admit the "Burger Kingston!" chants were funny, but Jesus, can we get off the body type-framing chants, please? Especially since Kingston is actually kinda not fat now?
  • Although I thought the match got a little overwrought at times, the story of Kingston's hubris and Icarus' never-say-die, you-can't-beat-me attitude were spot on, and way more well-done than what the story was at Aniversario.
  • Speaking of throwing back to Aniversario, the Chikara locker room poured out of the back, making the Flood vs. Chikara angle automatically better than WCW vs. the nWo ever was.
  • Icarus' celebration after winning the Grand Championship felt almost as overwrought as the match itself, to the point where fans were actually leaving thinking it was the end of the show. However, I think given what was about to come next, his celebration had to be prolonged. If it wasn't going to end the show, he had to get some kind of extended moment in the Sun during it.
  • I had no idea Delirious was kidnapped (again!... he's always getting kidnapped), but Soldier Ant being brought out actually got me pretty giddy... until it was clear they were brainwashed.
  • Kobald came forth to challenge the MIGHTY TITAN OF TITOR, which cemented his status as biggest folk hero of the show. I actually thought his spear was going to work, until he just ended up in the goozle. The chokebreaker killed him dead, man. Poor Kobald. POOR KOBALD.

Match of the Night:Fire Ant, Worker Ant, and Green Ant vs. Missile Assault Ant, Orbit Adventure Ant, and Arctic Rescue Ant - To be honest, I didn't expect much out of this match going in. It was nothing against the individual workers, but I thought it would've been marked by the same kind of interference and chicanery that kicked off the Envoy/BDK match and finished the Batiri/Odditorium match. That wasn't to say the match finished clean. However, the shenanigans in this match were embedded within a fantastic trios match, the kind which has become one of the signatures of Chikara over the years.

As with any trios match, the teamwork was all on point. It's easy to point out all the high-flying, complex moves performed, mainly because they were visually spectacular. The Xtreme Force triple-team forced snowboard spot on the back of Worker Ant was topped only by a death-defying Ant Hill Splash to the outside. But each team adopted the traditional Southern tag team roles so well. I was super-impressed by how well the Xtreme Force was able to cut the ring in half and work over Worker Ant, in particular. He may have seemed to have a rough match, but he certainly recovered from his flubs in a way that made them seem like they were part of the script.

But the two most impressive individual performers were Green Ant (typically) and Missile Assault Ant (surprisingly). I figured Green Ant would come out on fire, since he has become one of the best wrestlers on the indies and possibly in the country over the last few years. But Missile Assault Ant was the revelation. He did great crowd work, had all the big spots for his team, and generally drove the action on his squad. And the finish of the match was super well-done, taking advantage of the chaos inherent in a typical Chikara trios match to put a fresh spin on a classic heel trope (removing the turnbuckle pad) while keeping it in the flow of the match. On a show where the return of King of Trios was announced, it's appropriate the best match was a classic six-man (ant?) tag.

Overall Thoughts: Just when you think you have the answers, Chikara, like Rowdy Roddy Piper, changes the questions. The Flood wasn't exactly at a loss during the show; the most major defeat suffered by the invading group saw the Throwbacks continue their torrid streak from winning Tag World Grand Prix last night and triumphing in the four-way elimination tag match. But the group already saw its main objective, decimating the Chikara name, go out the window at National Pro Wrestling Day. The fact that they all had to wrestle under the Chikara banner was a defeat to begin their campaign. So the heavy artillery had to be brought out.

Now, Delirious' inclusion within the secret weapon trio was a bit baffling to me, since the last time he was in a Chikara ring, he was fighting a battle under devious terms. Perhaps he was secretly rehabilitated somewhere between the closure at Aniversario last year and the end of Wrestling Is Respect in January. I don't know. However, Soldier Ant as the other hostage was a trump card revelation. I wondered what had become of the erstwhile military mat mite, but, as Friend of the Blog and super-cool wrestling fan type person De O'Brien said initially, The Winter Soldier Ant is a brilliant comic book character type to port into this story in particular.

Speaking of comic characters, the third secret weapon, named mysteriously as The Titan of Titor, apparently, looked an awful lot like some iteration of Bane. I racked my brain to think of who could be behind the mask at first. He was too ripped to be Chris Hero and too tall to be Tim Donst. But then I saw him shrug off a Kobald spear, lift him over his head in goozle position, and just about kill him dead with a chokebreaker. At that point, identity didn't mean as much to me as the raw physical brutality he doled out, and how much that moment cemented Kobald as the newest Chikara folk hero.

He took charge during his trios match like he was a confident, veteran leader rather than the third wheel of the trio. And having Kobald be the one who was laid out in the prime spot made him yet another leading face. IN the span of only three months, Kobald has gone from whimsical poop goblin with the greatest 24/7 Championship victory ever to one of the most celebrated and sympathetic heroes that Chikara has. Well, had at least. The Batiri announced today on their Facebook page that Kobald has "died." I doubt this development will lead to a permanent end for the Poop Demon. Still, he is now a martyr, which will only strengthen his reaction when he heroically comes back (I hope).

And a rebirth calls for new faces to stand up against the rising tides of floodwater. Old heroes had to die in order for new ones to take their places. Eddie Kingston faltering under the pressure of the Chikara Special gave rise to Icarus as the standard bearer for the tecnicos, as weird as that might have sounded at Under the Hood. Archibald Peck finally returned to the timeline to be the first to challenge Jimmy Jacobs. The Throwbacks coalesced and became the tag team they were meant to be. Even Ashley Remington's debut emitted so much promise for the future.

And heroes can't flourish unless they have strong villains against which to battle. Whether Qefka the Quiet executing on the most brilliant heel character ever in the wrestling mime, Tursas returning to create a HOSS VORTEX of certain doom alongside Nøkken, or Missile Assault Ant asserting himself as the alpha of the Impostor Ants, The Flood proved they have ranks strong enough to go toe to toe with Chikara's best.

The characters were only one part of what made the rebirth of Chikara so successful. The story was laid out for the rest of the season. It had moments on which to hang a hat, both positive and negative. The wrestling action was tremendous. And the sense of community felt like it had never gone away. The Chikaraverse proved itself immortal, and the journey towards infinity has been kicked off. This show may be talked about for a long time, even if at its heart would turn out to be transitional in terms of its importance in resolution.
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From the Archives: Team Tremendous vs. the Candice and Joey Show

May 27, 2014, 9:00 am
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Candice LeRae has spent the last year or so proverbially bitch-slapping anyone who would have dared call her an opening-match special attraction for PWG as the calling card for her career. She's been putting in major work in the Guerrilla since TEN last year, and in the best development ever, she's been spreading her wings across the country in places such as Chicago, Southern Illinois, and New Orleans. Her most recent non-SoCal stop was the CZW Academy, where she and tag team (and life) partner Joey Ryan took on Beyond Wrestling's hottest tag team, Bill Carr and Friend of the Blog Dan Barry. This match was actually my first taste of Team Tremendous, a mistake that I should've rectified a long time ago. Carr is a Certified HOSS™, and Barry could probably don a lucha mask and work for CMLL or AAA tomorrow and no one would give him any shade for being a gringo. This match was my favorite on the WSU Secret Show upon which it was situated, and after you watch it, you should be in love with all four competitors. No doubt.

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