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I expected this match to not live up to the hype but sure enough this was a damn good match. EC3 doesn't really have any offense that looks all that impressive but Spud sold the hell out of everything and totally made this match with his selling and fire. I like Lucha Underground more than I like TNA but this match was definitely better than anything I've seen so far in my LU watching. And I'd put it just behind Roman Reigns vs. Daniel Bryan from Fastlane as probably my 2nd favorite match from this year, with Cena/Rusev in 3rd.

Young/Roode was pretty good but Eric Young had some very goofy selling after he was piledriven on a chair that I really didn't like. I almost want to see Kurt Angle vs. Bobby Lashley for next week but I don't know why. I also know I really DO want to see Low Ki vs. Galloway. Just because of how pissed Low Ki looks in all their interactions after he got cut with that pipe. Skipped through most of that segment with him and the BDC club though. Skipped the Magnus/Bram match but I kind of dug the "kiss my boot" angle. Dug all the promos and hype videos for Spud/ECIII. Thought the match lived up to the hype actually. Incredible performance by Spud, I'd put it ahead of any of the 3 guys in the Rumble triple threat. ECIII has a good look and is very good at the character stuff but he doesn't really impress me in the ring. I dug him in the post match stuff though. EDIT: I forgot to mention Robbie E. I might have to check out some BroMans stuff to see if they are usually that entertaining.

It makes sense that they would have had shorter cards in the closed circuit days before PPV since, if I'm not mistaken, a lot of closed circuit locations were theaters and people don't really expect to sit in the theater for more than 2 hours.

I don't know why they still think it's going to matter if their part timer movie star has the belt while he's going on talk show circuits promoting his movie. The Rock wasn't bringing the belt with him to The Tonight Show when he was the champ was he? The movie people probably try and stop it and I'm sure the talk show producers aren't really keen on it either.

God damn it, now I'm gonna have to watch TNA just so I can weigh in on whether or not it's better than the Royal Rumble Triple Threat. Personally, if THAT'S the high mark of the year so far I don't think it's impossible that ECIII vs. Spud is better because a large portion of that triple threat is just Cena & Rollins doing a million false finishes that you don't buy at all because you're still waiting for Brock to get back in it.

The last PPV I watched the whole thing was TLC, and that was just for the curiosity factor of seeing what the hell Big Show & Erick Rowan were gonna do for a Stairs match. I generally find myself only watching the top 2 matches of PPVs now. I'll probably only watch Cena/Rusev, Brock/Roman & maybe the IC Title clusterfuck although I'm still pretty bitter that WWE put Stardust in that match and the story with Goldust seems to already be over so I may not watch that out of spite.

Pirata Morgan spitting Dandy's blood in that match was truly one of the more disgusting things I have seen in wrestling. I mean, we've all seen a guy bite his bleeding opponent and then spit blood but Pirata Morgan is like a damn fountain with it to where you just know his whole mouth is full. It's fucking gross man. As far as a match, I thought it was too long and I got pretty annoyed with El Dandy constantly being cut off by the referee. Unfortunately I think this was just something El Dandy started to rely on a lot in his singles matches at this time period because I had even more issues with it in 89.

Yea I definitely remember Dolph Ziggler, along with Kenny Dykstra, as one of the early "fake real names" that came from creative. Not sure why he's taking credit for it now.

That's great context. Especially when you think about how much people are crapping on the idea of ONE Sting match.

Yea, I am seeing things like this more and more, it's kind of ridiculous. Wrestlers care about their booking MOSTLY in relation to how it affects their paycheck. Sure, some guys would take less money if it meant they got to be the champ, but most guys only care about being booked like shit because it costs them money. Only the purest of marks would want to leave the main roster to go to NXT just so they could have "good booking."

I think Rusev/Cena has potential to be Cena's best WrestleMania match ever. And I think it's been pretty well booked so far, at least for a Cena feud but that's really all I care about. I would like to see Roman Reigns and Brock have a good match but I don't know if the crowd will even give them a chance.

I really really like the stuff I've seen from his babyface run in World Class. Like to where I actively wanted to see every single match he ever had as a babyface. It was a really short run though and no one else ever thought about using him that way so it really doesn't do much for him in a Top 100 ever type poll. Never cared much for any of the heel stuff I've seen from him in Dallas.

You may need to expunge my vote then, a large part of my "don't care, but will watch" vote comes with the knowledge that I will not be watching without some sort of enhancement.

I listened to Bill Dundee on Terry Garvin's show a while back but forgot about the show. I am listening to the Eric Embry one right now and it's pretty good. Interesting story where he says he had decided to retire from the wrestling business and had opened up some restaurants in Florida after the end of Joe Blanchard's promotion in San Antonio. He says he was just working big shows every once in a while in Puerto Rico where Brody saw him and begged him, on his knees, to come to World Class for Brody when Brody had his short booking stint.

But the difference between them stopping Cena's initial push and when they cut off guys that are hot is that Cena really wasn't getting over as the white meat blue chip babyface that they brought him in as.

There rarely seems to be any rhyme or reason to them skipping episodes in their weekly TV section. Do they not know how much that pisses off the completist portion of their audience? Especially when we know they HAVE the footage.

He obviously regretted pushing the hell out of Brock Lesnar just to see him leave because they have been doing their patented stop-start pushes ever since.

Yea, the local TV business changed BECAUSE of Vince coming in and offering to pay for the same time slots that the local territory had for free.

So John Cena vs. Rusev is the only WrestleMania match that I care about at all. I'm not down on Roman Reigns like a lot of people but I just don't expect much out of him vs. Brock. I guess it's really not THAT different from last year where the only things that felt important were the Bryan matches.

"Stop bitching on social media and complaining to people outside the company" meeting that will likely be followed by reports of what was said in the meeting.

Ok so Pimpinela Escarlata vs. Son of Havoc is by far my favorite match as I am up to what I think is now episode 6. I really dig Son of Havoc's act and Pimpinela was really great in that match especially his arm selling. I still don't understand why Mil Muertes is using the shitty Flatliner as the finish when his Spear looks like it's killing dudes. Drago and King Cuerno was much better the 2nd time. I hope someone doesn't blow out a knee doing a dive and landing bad on the stairs like Drago almost did. I really do not like Cuerno's thing where he shoves the ref around. There is a difference between when guys push and get physical with a ref and it doesn't cause a DQ and the way Cuerno completely shoves them down, which should be a DQ. His 100 mile an hour Suicide Dive keeps him in my good graces though. Matt Striker's line about "wow huge news, bombshell social media, dirt sheet quality" is making me regret my decision not to switch to Spanish versions. Pentagon Jr. should just go fully psycho and change his name to Pentagone. The main event felt too contrived at times with too much obvious waiting for the next spot/dive but that's probably going to be a frequent complaint of mine.

Sorry it took me so long to watch this. I had watched this shortly after I sent you the PM not realizing this was what you had done commentary on and remember popping big time over that referee's dropkick which I realize now was probably not a referee and was Ken Ramey. I struggled with this footage. I didn't even realize that was Lars Anderson because I hadn't seen Lars with bleached blonde hair before, so it was nice to hear who he was and Kenji Shibuya. Your line about Lars biting Patterson made me laugh out loud. It looks like San Francisco had some wild action in it's main events. If you do another one, do the Haystacks Calhoun vs. The Graham Brothers handicap as I remember liking that a lot. Or something with Ernie Ladd, who I think has a match with Patterson on there.

I think the real interesting part in this is whether Jane Geddes is going to make any noise now that she's been let go. Apparently she was moved from her spot as head of Talent Relations for going to bat for the women in NXT over some of this stuff.

I don't understand why you think it's "expected professional behavior" for months of ego stroking for former employees to return to a former place of work. When does that ever happen? I don't even think it's that uncommon for employees to leave a place of business in a less than ideal way after a long period of building frustration and then coming back a few years later once everyone has kind of gotten over it. I've seen it multiple times in my own place of work.

I think I'd rather be Bryan and hidden in the midcard IC title scene than be in Randy's position of being involved in the worst storyline in the company. I think they handled his return even worse than Bryan's although the consequences aren't really that big a deal. But they could have had a very hot return with Randy vs. The Authority but they are doing an awful drawn out "Randy pretends to be with the Authority" deal that absolutely no one is buying into. They should be pushing Bryan above Randy but they aren't exactly doing good things for Randy or Seth Rollins right now either. They just have a terrible creative team that hasn't booked anyone well over the past year except for Rusev and Brock Lesnar. They are at 1997-1998 WCW levels of completely wasting a very talented roster.