cactus
Members
-
Joined
-
Last visited
Everything posted by cactus
-
I can't remember the last time I've enjoyed a main roster PPV as much as this. Only the main event was a let down. -
Been subscribed to you for a while. Keep up the good work!
-
Following the non-finish of their last match, these two are now having a hair match in the same arena. Yet again Califan attacks Guerrero on the outside. Caifan has great facials, intensely staring at the crowd while he massacres their hero. Guerrero eventually mounts a comeback hitting that brutal baseball slide he did in their previous encounter. Once they get into the ring, Guerrero stretches out Caifan with some neat submissions. They trade some convincing near falls before it's time to go home. Not quite the bloody match I was expecting, but this was still good. ★★★
-
Another day, another lucha brawl in a run down building between two washed up luchadors. It only takes a little over a minute for Caifan to bust Guerrero open. The crowd are REALLY behind Guerrero. Most of this match is fought around the ring. Once they get back in the ring, Guerrero hits his signature slingshot corner dropkick and follows it up with a baseball slide which violently drops Caifan onto the concrete floor surrounding the ring. More outside brawling. Sadly, this has a crap ending. Guerrero attempts his dropkick again, only for Caifan to counter it with a ball shot, ending the match via disqualification. Apparently this was done to set up a wager match down the line. Due to the lack of a proper finish and the overall short length, this feels more like a decent angle than a great match. My takeaways from this is how over Guerrero is and how brilliantly Caifan can play the smug prick. ★★¾
-
This is a rare Black Terry match that actually starts with some wrestling! He's not half bad at grappling, although it's not too long until they start bringing out the stiff headbutts. Cavenario has a good look and hits a beautiful wrist clutch suplex that doesn't look a hair out of place in a brawl like this. I did like the low blow finish. Cavenario hits one first, but the ref is distracted. Terry returns the favour in front of the referee and gets disqualified. It didn't feel cheap and was great way for Cavenario to get heat. This feels like a bit of a let down as I have just seen Terry's phenomenal brawl with Wotan, but this is still very worth your time if you're a Black Terry fan. ★★★¼
-
How the hell has this manage to slip by me for the past three years? The majority of this match is two guys slapping the tar out of each other and I'm okay with that. Wotan trash talks Terry mid-brawl and it adds another layer of authenticity. Near enough all the strikes look like the real deal. Terry throws a few blows that don't quite land and Wotan laughs him off. Bad looking strikes are fine as along as no one sells for them. That chair shot Wotan takes to to the head made me wince. Just when you think the match is about to run out of steam, Wotan nails a suicide dive and then eats a back drop to the dirty ringside area before brawling through the crowd. Wotan's mask is ripped open, both men are bloodied, covered in dirt and gravel. This has got to be one of the best brawls of this decade. ★★★★½
-
Mr. Niebla gets zero time to shine as Caifan attacks him with a chain at the start of the match. Caifan then spends the next five minutes brutalising him, by tearing opening his mask and brawling around the ring. Caifan is great at throwing punches and looking like a smug asshole. The image of Niebla's bloody face being exposed through his torn mask made for a gruesome visual. Niebla hulks up by dancing and spitting into the air and catching said spit, nice. Caifan is a excellent heel and can even look smug whilst taking a beating. Without spoiling the ending, I wasn't a fan of the lame finish. There's some great stuff here, but it feels too all over the place for me to highly recommend this. ★★¾
-
While this certainly wasn't the best brawl ever, both guys bleed buckets, brain each other with chair shots and aren't afraid of hurting themselves for the sake of our entertainment. Even the referee eats a few nasty chair shots from an enraged Demus. The finish is tarnished by the board spot botching, but who said brawls had to be pretty? ★★★¼
-
Demus is quickly becoming my favourite lucha wrestlers. He stands at a mere 5'3, but he's a vicious little troll who's not afraid to play nasty. With his beefy build and awesome face paint, he has a brilliant look. Before the bell even rings, a failed dive attempt by Iron Kid sees him crashing violently into the crowd. What ensues next is a brawl around the ring. Demus rips open Kid's mask and goes to town on his forehead with a fork. Iron Kid gets a comeback going after hitting some beautiful planchas. Demus has a brutal looking finish. A beautiful, grimy lucha sprint. ★★★★
-
A bloody brawl in a dirty arena. Terry and Demus spend most of the match fighting around the small, dingy venue. Demus spits a fan's beer into Terry's face and Terry returns the favour by bloodying Demus with some stiff headbutts. These guys know how to brawl. We get to see some actual wrestling moves once the action goes to the ring, with 65 year old Terry busting out a lung blower and eating a devastating top rope splash. This isn't the best brawl that you'll ever see, but it's great to see that this style of wrestling is still alive in this decade. I love me some gritty lucha. ★★★¼
-
An emotionally charged lucha bout with decent action. This is the ageing veteran trying to prove that he can hang with the new kids. Atlantis moves extremely well for a 52 year old, hitting many planchas. La Sombra is a phenomenal athlete with buckets of charisma. He has Rush in his corner, who isn't afraid to get involved. The crowd eat up every 2.9 count in the final fall. My main gripe with this match is that the workrate doesn't quite match the atmosphere. It all feels like your standard lucha fare and I feel they needed to up the hate and start brawling. Regardless, this is still recommended. ★★★½
-
As someone who's burnt out by the constant, uninspired spotfests that plague AEW Dynamite every week, this was a refreshing change of pace. This doesn't go too long ( goes just over ten minutes) nor do I ever question who I'm meant to be rooting for. I know nothing about this promotion or any wrestler in this match, so it's good that I can tell who's the face and the heels within a few minutes. This has some INSANE spots, most of which I have never seen before. After the faces get their shine in, the beefy heels take control of the action and it's up for the faces to look for an opening before it's too late. A sleeper MOTYC for sure. ★★★★¼
-
Five minutes of Dean Malenko showing the world he's the fucking best. He bust out all kinds of technical wizardry. The only thing he can't seem to do is not look goofy whenever he playts to the crowd. The Korakuen Hall crowd doesn't seem to mind, though. Too brief to rate, but well worth a gander.
-
This was all kinds of brilliance with a pace that never lets up. Think Canadian Stampede 10 man tag on crack. Everyone makes quick tags and thus the action never gets a chance to stagnate. Inoki looks like the dog's bollocks, Maeda effortlessly plays the dickhead and Mutoh is the rookie with a lot of heart. The way they got rid of Maeda and Inoki made them both look strong and left me clamouring to see them go at it again down. In the end it's down to Mutoh to try and win once the rest of his team is eliminated. With the molten crowd roaring for him, It's a star making moment for the young Mutoh. ★★★★¾
-
Despite Ospreay's dodgy facial expressions, his match with Archer was the MOTN by a large margin. Evil vs Fale was shit, no surprises there. I also love SANADA vs ZSJ working technical clinic. Ibushi vs KENTA and Tanahashi vs Okada both were disappointments to me. Ibushi/KENTA never really got into that second gear and Okada/Tana just felt like a condensed version of their previous classic bouts. A good match, just nothing new with the exception of the drama of seeing if Tana can still hang at Okada's level. Decent start to the G1, although it boggles my mind why they decided to run an arena as big as the American Airlines Center. Cagematch says they had an attendance of 4,846 in a venue that holds 16,000+ when WWE runs it.
-
Holy shit. I can't say much more than what's already been said. This was a mid-south flavoured brawl with buckets of emotion. Cody looked like a big star during his entrance. Dustin's bladejob! Dustin's punch-drunk selling!! That post match stuff that could make a rock shed a tear!!! Cody really stepped up here and Goldy got a chance to show why he's one of the GOATs on a big platform. Isn't pro-wrestling marvellous? ★★★★½
-
This was a great way to cement Edge as a ruthless bastard who's more than happy with bloodying up a 57 year old Ric Flair in his hometown in front of his family to keep hold of his freshly won WWE title. The bumps Flair takes is insane and his bladejob makes me miss blood in wrestling. This is not a match that would of worked well on PPV, but it does it's job as making Edge look like a main eventer player after his shock championship win a few weeks prior. ★★★¾
-
This is it. This is how you wrap a long term rivalry. These guys know each other so well that they telegraph each other's big moves, resulting in some phenomenal exchanges. Cena and Punk have to dig deep and add new weapons into their arsenal. Punk hits a banned piledriver, and it's as shocking as it was back in 2013. Cena debuts his messy hurricanrana here, and that's enough for him to shock Punk and land a quick AA to get the win and go to the main event of Wrestlemania. Back in 2011-2013, I was such a CM Punk match and would rave endless at anything he did, but I happy to say this match holds up and then some. ★★★★½
-
Steve Austin is on commentary and he's the best worker here. That's saying a lot when you've also got two of the greatest pure wrestlers throwing themselves off cages. Austin has settled into his heel character perfectly. He's picking arguments with his former friend Jim Ross, while Paul Heyman brown noses him. Benoit and Angle effortlessly blend their pure wrestling with steel cage brawling. They can suplex you, but they are also not afraid to launch you head first into the steel mesh. Angle famously misses a moonsault from the top of the cage, and it's still as insane of a bump as it was in 2001. Austin eventually gets involved and costs Benoit the match. This served as definitive feud ender for Benoit's rivalry with Angle, all while carrying on his one with Austin. ★★★★
-
As brilliant as I remembered this being. Austin is so good in this and I don't think any wrestler has had a better year than he did in 2001. He keeps Benoit under control with eye pokes so subtle that Jim Ross doesn't even pick up on them the first time around. The heels isolating Benoit and keeping him away from his partner is one of the best examples of a building up for a hot tag I've ever seen. They do a fake-out when Benoit gets the tag and Earl Hebner isn't there to see it. It was so brilliantly executed that I didn't care that I was rooting for a child murderer. Once the tag is finally made, all hell breaks loose. Props to Triple H for carrying on after tearing his quad. My only grip in this is that Earl Hebner's officiating feels rather inconsistent. Aside from that minor nitpick, this is probably the best straight-up tag match WWE has ever put on and one of the best RAW matches of all-time. ★★★★¾
-
One of the my main takeaways from watching these early RAWs is how brilliant 123 Kid has been. His push has felt completely organic and he's facing his biggest challenger yet in the WWF champion. This rare face vs face match starts with a handshake. Kid shows that he can hang with Hart, countering a lot of his holds. Hart gets the pin quickly, only to discover that Kid's foot was on the rope and demands the match restart. This made for an excellent touch, as no face would of done this if they were wrestling against a heel. The nearfalls in this work so well, with Kid hitting a moonsault of a standing Hitman, reminiscence to his first match when he got an upset win over Razor Ramon. Hart eventually taps out Kid with the Sharpshooter and shows his respect to fiery underdog. ★★★★¼
-
I think their previous RAW match was better due to the quicker nature, but this was still highly enjoyable viewing because of Shawn bumping around crazy. They restart the match after Jannetty pins HBK when he's on the ropes, as pointed out by Diesel, Michael's new bodyguard. Jannetty's high flying is very slick, although this ends up costing him when crashes and burn after a failed crossbody attempt sees him violently hit the mats outside the ring. ★★★¾
-
Marty Jannetty looks like the biggest star in the business on this night. He returns after a 5 month absence to challenge his former tag team partner. This is a total sprint and Jannetty dominates with some quick roll ups and headscissors. HBK tries to bail only for Mr. Perfect to block his escape. Michaels takes back control after dunking Jannetty onto the ropes after a failed headscissors attempt. After the Razor Ramon upset earlier in the night, every Jannetty nearfall feels like it could end the match. It's only after Mr Perfect launches a towel in Michaels' face that Jannetty manages to secure the win. Excellent TV match that made everyone involved look great. ★★★★
-
It's hard to rate this as a match as it's more of angle. Razor brutalises the jobber with a nasty chop and slam. The Kid hits a moonsault and he gets the surprise win, sending the crowd into a frenzy. Razor is furious. This is an exceptionally unique way to debut a talent.
-
Yeah, this is a the match with the iconic springboard to superkick spot, but the whole match is well worth your time. Starting off with some excellent amateur exchanges, Shelton really shines when he's showing off his athleticism. He also hits a dragon whip counter that would make Kawada blush. Probably his best performance ever. ★★★¾