Dylan Waco

I could see an argument for having the swerve come tomorrow on RAW, but aside from that I have zero problem with the actual finish of the show (excluding the existence of HHH)

Agree with this and I liked that show a good bit. Anyone else really love the fact that Bryan v. Cena had the ultimate in decisive finishes and Cena went down in the dead center of the ring to a single KO shot?

Tag title match was teased but never announced

No they don't. HHH isn't crippled like Undertaker. They can and will put him in a PPV match just to show where the power lies. I don't disagree with your argument Will, but it's worth noting that HHH got his "I'm the Messiah, fuck the underlings" nut win Bryan took the fall off of his finisher, with Orton literally doing nothing

Rumble is the second biggest show of the year

It kind of lost me when they were kicking each other and slapping each other, I will admit. But yeah, I seriously don't get people bitching about this. It was iconic. It was a moment. It'll also be pretty hard for them to screw it up, or let me put it this way. It'll be a lot harder for them to screw it up than a lot of other scenarios. We could have easily just gotten another shitty Rey Mysterio type reign. I thought the slapping sequence was the best part of the entire match because it played off the promo on Monday

This is the part that concerns me. If Punk would have feuded with anyone but HHH in 2011, his momentum would not have been killed. I feel that HHH goes over Bryan in a NO DQ match next pPV and kills Bryan dead. If that happens Bryan is fucked, but that is a constant risk as long as HHH is alive. He didn't fuck up the match, Bryan went over clean, Cena is taking time off which clears the way for Bryan as face ace and Orton - who is vastly better as a heel - finally turned. Given what could have happened the end result was way, way better than I had feared coming in. Also this show fucking crushed every show I watched from the G1

I"m amused by people being upset at the finish as I actually think in many ways it's the best possible scenario for Bryan long term assuming that he feuds with Orton and not HHH. Also don't see anyway that was a slow building match. I really did enjoy the hell out of it, but it was a bomb throwing, video game affair if I've ever seen one. Great match within that style but it absolutely was within that style.

I know this is mean, but I really was hoping HHH would blow out both of his quads on the way to the ring

I don't want to come across as the guy shitting on Punk v. Lensar because I thought it was pretty great, but I really thought the Cena match was considerably better for a variety of reasons, perhaps the most important being that Cena v. Lensar felt completely unique. Mixed tag was a fun spotfest. I actually like Big E a good bit

Also I think that was by far the best Punk has looked this year which goes to show that he really needs some storyline motivation to kick it into the next gear

I really liked the bulk of Punk/Lesnar a lot, but I was annoyed by the fact that rib/back body part work on Punk really went nowhere and didn't even seem to bother him at all in the second half of the match. I agree that his strategic attacks were cool and I also give him a lot of credit for laying it in with his shots which is something that he doesn't always do. Brock looked pretty great too, though I admit that it's hard for me to adapt to him working a more pro wrestling style of match like this. This had the look and feel of a WWE Attitude Era main event, albeit one with much, much better work

No way, Joey Styles needs to JBL his ass

Diva's match was actually a solid match. Natty is good always does well when I see her on house shows so that's not really a huge shock, but I wish we got more of this sort of thing from the Diva's division then what we usually get

Exposer and I talked Thursday about how Christian v. Del Rio had real show stealing potential. That will be hard to top, especially with the main event having the HHH handicap

Del Rio v. Christian was pretty awesome. It felt a bit rushed, but they made the most of their time and managed to have a match that delivered with big bumps, psychology, solid transitions, good counters and a good finish that played off the early armwork. I have really enjoyed Del Rio this year as a whole and Christian looks to be hitting his groove also. Post-match Del Rio promo was interesting.

I've watched way too much ROH and NJPW this year to pretend that was the worst match of the year but it did suck. On the other hand I expected it to suck and the visual of the fire off the big bumps was at least impressive. I was largely indifferent to it, perhaps it would have seemed worse if I was paying closer attention. I thought Sandow v. Rhodes was a pretty good match. I hate Cody winning but he pretty much has to, especially with Sheamus out with injury.

I saw about two minutes and it was painful. Flair has also started doing a lot of dates with "Nature Boy" Paul Lee a former WCW/SMW jobber from the Chattanooga area who is pretty much the least respected promoter in the region. In fact he is allegedly going to second Paul Lee for a show in El Paso soon and he gave Paul Lee a replica NWA title at the last show he promoted. Really pathetic

Combat Zone Wrestling Tangled Web VI 8/11 David Starr v. JT Dunn This was presented as a sort of "tryout" match and was pretty short which was a good thing because I imagine Dunn in particular could get pretty intolerable in a ten-minute plus match. But this worked pretty well as an opener. Low on substance, but they sort of worked a variation of move heavy offensive guy v. striker which at least gave the match some structural basis to work with. Nothing special here though I did think Starr sold stuff pretty well and his floorpunching to "tune up the band" before his big forearm finish had me laughing out loud. Joe Gacy/Alex Colon/Biff Busick v. Shane Strickland/Matt Tremont/Greg Excellent Aside from a couple of over the top cutesy spots, including a cringeworthy one involving the ref, this was shockingly good and a great example of how booking and crowd heat can really help a match. I am a fan of the Alex Colon character, though not always a fan of him as a worker. This starts with Alex Colon the character shitting on everything and refusing to wrestle in theory because he's scared of Strickland who beat him at the last CZW show. He wages a sit down strike in the ring. The faces come out to a huge pop and are pretty much the most hilariously indie looking team ever as you have your big beareded guy in a singlet (Excellent), your athletic looking black guy (Strickland) and your white guy in a wifebeater/bandana get up who looks like he just got fired from his construction job for selling dirt weed laced with PCP to Guatemalan immigrants (Tremont). Strickland can't coax Colon out of the chair he's sitting in, so he eventually levels him with a kick and they start off the match as Colon regroups on the floor. I am not going to do a whole play by play but I note all of this because right out of the gate they establish the importance of that feud and the importance of Tremont/Gacy feud is known by pretty much everyone in the building already, so the match has real stakes and great heat throughout. They do a really good job keeping the guys who are feuding apart from each other for most of the match so when the parties engage it feels like a really huge deal. Match is well built as you have a strong heat section of Strickland (though the FIP was admittedly weak) and then a semi-heat section on Tremont. On the front of this you have a crazy segment with Gacy of all people doing a moonsault and a triple dive from the faces. On the back end of the match there are some great spots with Colon including him leaping into a crazy Tremont powerbomb off of the hot tag and a completely insane hilo onto Strickland where he literally lands up in the second row. There were lots of cool touches in this, my favorite of which was Gacy being the guy to cheapshot Tremont down to size after his initial flurry. I also really liked the finish, which saw your egregious Antonio Cesaro rip off (seriously it's actually embarrassing) go for a big suplex, Excellent escapes out of desperation, but then gets locked back in and dropped nastily on his head. This got time, but I really don't feel like it even approached over kill, and aside for a couple of stupid spots, the booking played to everyone's strengths, forwarded the feuds without giving away exchanges better served for bigger singles matches, and really played well to the crowds interests. This is why indie feds should run trios matches more often. Navaeh v. Shanna Boy this wasn't very good. People keep telling me I should pay some attention to some of the women on the indies and with the exception of Athena I sort of blank on who gets suggested. Then I watch a match like this and I think "fuck do I really want to get involved with this shit?" I assume a place like WSU or Shimmer has some pretty good stuff, but this was just a jumbled mess of stuff, made worse by a lengthy DJ Hyde promo to set the match up and terrible announcing. Not the worst match of the year or anything, but not good and a real drop off from that last match. Caleb Konley v. Shane Hollister I cannot believe Konley has not been scooped up by ROH yet. He is pretty much the ultimate in indie pretty boys who run through athletically impressive but ultimately meaningless offense. He would probably work for a third of what they are paying Eddie Edwards, and even now with his hair dyed in a slightly trashier way, he is pretty much the perfect pick to appeal to the twink fetishist wing of ROHbotdom. When I saw this match on the lineup I pretty much figured it would go like this - lots of big spots, a brief tease of psychology, followed by some more big spots and then a roll up finish. For matches of this ilk this was relatively unoffensive, in large part because it wasn't thirty minutes long and filled with absurd number of near falls. But it's not my kind of match. Azreal/Bandido Jr. v. Alex Reynolds/John Silver Now this on the other hand was a wonderful example of a match that went way over the edge into overkill. The first half of this was actually pretty good. I was kind of mystified by the fact that Alex Reynolds looks to be a face now, but the front end was well put together, with an amusing face shine and a respectable build to a hot tag. Then Reynolds came in and this just turned into a string of stuff that never seemed to end. I will grant that there were two completely insane spots - a powerbomb/tope combo that saw Silver crack his back on the guardrail, and the finish itself which was a double stomp/DDT combo - but the bulk of the post-hot tag run was not so good looking stuff, that went on forever and was strung together in a haphazard manner. AR Fox v. Andrew Everett Sort of a strange match. I like both guys, though I think it's a real shame that Everett is likely going to be pigeonholed in these spotathon matches, even if he does have some incredible spots. Without the Chiva Kid mask his look screams heel, so I was happy to see him work an early ambush here and I thought this was smart just to be a string of wild spots because that's ultimately what you want out of these two. My beef with this was the pacing which didn't fit the craziness of what was going on. It started out with this crazy burst that saw Everett hit a massive springboard shooting star to the floor where he landed on his feet (which has to be awful for his knees by the way), but then it sort of turned into this match where both guys would tease selling things for a bit or transitioning into someone working a control segment, before going right back to another big spot. It's kind of hard to articulate and I still enjoyed this, but it sort of tried to straddle the fence between a spotfest and a more traditional sort of match and I don't think it succeeded. On the other hand there was tons of crazy shit like the bit building to Fox's moonsault on the floor, or Everett hitting a crazy reverse frankensteiner off the ropes, or Fox missing his imploding splash and basically piledriving himself, or Everett's 630 splash....well you get the point. And this did have a really cool finish with both guys going for a springboard move at the same time and Fox hitting his finish in mid-air. So on scale this was both entertaining and kind of disappointing at the same time. Amasis/Ophidian v. BLKOut Holy shit did this have a horrible finish. Up to this point this show has had two spots where the ref has gotten directly involved in the match, included one spot where a ref got heaved half way across the ring with a hip toss. These teams spend ten minutes powerbombing each other on the floor, flying into the third row, and just generally brawling all around and the match ends when the ref gets kicked in the balls? Fucking awful. Up until then this match was pretty decent if you could ignore guys getting up from crazy shit, but that is about as terrible a finish as I've seen this year. Drew Gulak v. Masada I liked the idea of this match a lot better than the match itself. Gulak is someone who I think has a ton of potential but I don't think CZW is the best place for a guy with his skills. Masada I don't really hate but he's Masada and there is only so much you can expect out of him. This match was built around Masada's leg injury and on paper it was well worked. Gulak had a variety of leg attacks, Masada sold pretty well and it eventually after some hope spots it led to the finish with him tapping after a string of submissions. But a big chunk of this suffered from poor execution and then you had the female seconds involvement which wasn't constant but kept popping up at the worst times. I can't call this a bad match, but this really should have worked out better than it did. If nothing else I hope Gulak ends up with some interesting challengers now that he's got the belt. Rory Mondo/Ron Mathis/Drew Blood v. Lucky 13/Devon Moore/Danny Havoc - Tangled Web Match In no way was this a good match, but it was a violent spectacle and it was a needed pick me up after a title match that felt a bit tedious at times. The ring was completely surrounded with all sorts of stuff draped in barbed wire, including several boards, some crazy looking crate thing and a full side of the ring with a covered in it. There was also some scaffolding and other shit hanging from ceiling. And this was pretty much exactly the car crash sort of match you would expect to come out of that setting. Devon Moore in particular was completely nuts as he did a couple of spots off the scaffold. There were also a few nutso bumps to the floor, including one with two guys damn near dying flying through the crate of death that didn't break their fall at all. I'm not a huge fan of this style of wrestling, but as a single match on a show of this sort it had it's place. Overall Thoughts Pretty average show. I will give them credit for having a fair amount of variation on this card and also for succeeding in making virtually every match seem important which is something that a lot of indie feds really struggle with. I wouldn't recommend the show, but there were parts of it I enjoyed a ton and their are feuds and match ups that even a non-CZW fan like myself can follow and have interest in coming out of the show.

I have watched and enjoyed a ton of wrestling this year, but as I keep watching stuff and surveying the scene it is shocking how big the drop off is after the first five guys or so and with so many guys I really like virtually vanishing in terms of footage, getting injured or being crippled by shitty booking there is no telling what my top twenty or so is going to look like at the end of the year.

Same thoughts. Colt has had bigger self publicists and egos on the past. Not the worst but to me Mark Rollerball Rocco's "The Brits invented everything" act was far more grating. Colt himself is a bigger self publicist and has a bigger ego

Here is the thing - neither do I. On top of that I HATE Raven. I mean absolutely loathe him. And I don't really like Dreamer either.

I swear I'm not trying to coax you into an argument, but I think this is interesting because over the last few years I have watched a lot of the American TV from 97 and I honestly think this was the best single sequence of stuff on free tv that year and this is coming from someone who enjoyed the HF v. Americans angle more than just about any wrestling angle in history.

Nope I agree. Let's try and steer this back to discussion about Darren Young and his coming out.

I actually think he could be a solid mid-card act working at the US title level with the right breaks