October 2012

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What a way to re-introduce Shibata and Sakuraba to the audience. An absolute war with a red-hot crowd. Everyone has a role here, and they play it magnificently. Laughter7 are here to kick ass and show precisely zero fucks, Inoue is the whipping boy with a belly full of fire and Makabe is here to flip people off and to receive a hot tag, so thankfully he doesn't bog this match down too much. Pretty much a squash with a few hope spots. Inoue's spear was a thing of beauty and it caught me completely off-guard. Makabe & Inoue realize they have to play dirty if they want to stand a chance. They rush the illegal Sakuraba of the apron in order to double-team Shibata, but thi…

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TNA World Heavyweight Champion Austin Aries vs Jeff Hardy - TNA Bound For Glory 2012 The crowd dynamics are all fucked up for the match. It is clear TNA wanted Jeff Hardy to be the big babyface on his road to redemption since that famous incident with Sting. The crowd was 90% behind Aries especially early just overwhelming the Hardy support. There was one time during the shine, Tenay exclaims "Here is the Creatures making their voices heard" and it was just Aries fans chanting Aries. Taz was like what the fuck did you just say? I thought Jeff was more aggressive than normal which I liked. Aries was the consummate heel. He was feeding and left himself get showed …

Bobby Roode vs James Storm - TNA Bound For Glory 2012 Street Fight Beer Money Explodes~! One of the last angles I watched as a regular TNA viewer was when Roode turned on Storm the year prior by breaking the beer bottle over his head. They got a year out of the feud which is pretty good. King Mo is the Special Enforcer just because. As far as 21st Century brawls go this was pretty damn good. It felt more hate-filled than most nowadays. There was lets Feng Shui bullshit and more just pound the shit out of each other. Storm also tapped a gusher. He was wearing the full on Crimson Mask so that was pretty badass. They were throwing the haymakers to start, the babyf…

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These two are always a hit together. Yet another TV-banger between 'em w/ awesome action from start to finish; some of the highlights include Bryan's brief leg targeting with him ramming Ziggler's knees from the Surfboard position, Dragon Screw + that Figure 4, and those big spots of the match are exactly that -- big spots, which hit the high note beautifully. That X-Factor from the top was great. ***1/2

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I mentioned this match and my reaction to it on the podcast, so I wanted to dig it up and post it here, mainly so I could read it again, but also to try to get across just how I feel about this match and why I love it so much. As I said, this might be my favourite thing I've ever written about wrestling. Not that it's the best writing I've ever done, but because I have never been happier writing about wrestling than I was in this moment. I can still clearly remember sitting at a terminal at uni pretending to do work and instead watching the match again and writing this out, and the pure, unbridled joy I felt as I was doing so.

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