Sean Liska

I love Dave, I hate ragging on Dave, but this is a flaw from him. Again I see so many similarities with him and Vince. I remember when Dave was talking about why Bryan Alvarez was going to be the next great wrestling journalist. It was because Bryan would call him after watching a show, and he would have all the same opinions as Dave, without Dave even telling him. It wasn't that Bryan challenged him or made him think about things in a new way, just that Bryan agreed with him on everything.

He is really going all in on this PWG thing. I don't know what he even gets from this. He's smart enough to know that the star rating for Balor/Styles is so inconsequential as compared to whether Roman Reigns can connect with a casual audience emotionally in terms of what's actually important in 2017 wrestling.

I really enjoyed this a lot. Perro getting a cool storyline for the big show drew me in. I enjoyed the contrast of Perro's gritty old man offense and Tarzan Boy's high flying. Shocker was a fun bumper back in the day. Didn't expect to see Tarzan miss that dive at the end. Really good, they had me the whole way, and the finish gives them somewhere to to after the big show.

This over-delivered! They worked the match smartly in a way to hide some of the physical limitations of the talent here. Porky's act was over in Arena Mexico in 2000, it was still over in 2016 when I was watching him. Give the people what they want. Good start to the big show with the matches coming up.

What the hell? This turns into a WWF Hardcore Title match from this period, with the backstage brawling and weapons shots. Really fun bloody brawl, I always enjoy guys who aren't the greatest athletes who just beat the hell out of each other out of hatred, a forgotten art in today's wrestling. I was the one guy who liked the Pierroth-Vangellys feud from 2017 CMLL.

The match isn't very long but the post-match brawling is hot. We're all set for the big one on 3/17. I'm going to set a night aside to watch the whole show as it should be watched.

I thought it was an awesome WWE main event. Just such a wacky combination of all sorts of matches WWE has done over the past 30 years.

Not much to say about this one. One takeaway is that low-effort CMLL is probably more entertaining than low-effort from any other type of wrestling. There's not guys sitting around in chinlocks, there's stuff happening, structure, just not particularly engaging.

Oh my lord, what a collection of talent. This has to be one of the greatest collections of talent in a wrestling match ever. So many cool pairings like Casas/Hamada, Casas/Liger, Aguayo/Hamada like its 1982 NJPW, etc. This was fantastic and made me sad again about what a remarkable talent we lost in Aguayo Jr.

So many thoughts from watching this. What a great match. I like modern NJPW, but when people talk about it being the best wrestling of all-time - the modern guys are pimples on the asses of these dudes. I'm sorry, I just feel strongly about this era of NJPW juniors. Getting to see Casas and peak Otani was a wonderful unexpected treat, I wish we has gotten to see more Casas in the match. Wagner was great, I've always been one of his biggest fans. Just everything about this was so good.

Before the match Wagner gets in Perro Aguayo’s face and slaps him! Hell yeah, I’m ready for whatever this leads to. Quick rudo beatdown to start but the tecnicos make a hot comeback in the first fall, it’s chaotic with all 6 guys brawling around ringside. Atlantis and Rayo doing some comples sequences teaming together, cool, wasn’t expecting that. Rayo plancha! I enjoyed this - all the rudo beatdown brawls to start the year were fun but a nice tecnico cool stuff showcase was welcome here, well-executed, good intensity. Angle time! The rudos are beating up Perro Aguayo! Villano are going after Atlantis! It’s breaking down in Mexico City! Perro hops in the ring and starts kicking ass, Atlantis is chasing Villano down the aisle, by god is this Arena Mexico or the WMC-5 TV studio. The brawling just keeps going. This is amazing. This is the best thing CMLL has done all year and do we have some momentum moving forward.

I enjoyed this quite a bit, some nice CMLL title match style wrestling, with an interesting angle before the third fall. Very excited to get to the apuestas match.

How have you guys never gotten me to watch GCW? Watching the 79 stuff from the Yearbook project and it's great, it's like Memphis and Alabama except with more talent (I'm not saying it's as good as Memphis). Heenan as the lead heel, Hansen, Ole, Ladd, Masked Superstar, Hogan, a young Bret Hart, a young Buzz Sawyer, Atlas, Bob Armstrong, I'm loving it.

Main event was a fun tecnico-tecnico modern CMLL epic. Thought it was the best show of the year. Been watching a bunch of 2000 CMLL lately and you have to respect how this company just moves forward, week after week, year after year, decade after decade, with generally good to great stuff. They've never gotten enough recognition for that.

They fucked us over in Chile for SD's house show by taking out AJ Styles. I was his first time here ever. Guess our money doesn't matter as much Update: Owens is also out so HHH hopped on a plain and is working at least 1 of the 2 shows. I could care less about him but most fans here love him so I stand corrected. WWE did their best to fix 2 very different shows. Kudos. Yeah that's pretty cool. The HHH who worked those matches with Ambrose and Ziggler like he was a 1983 heel is pretty fun to watch, you might get some good stuff.

Watching last night's show and it's been pretty great. Our segunda was REY COMETA, GUERRERO MAYA Y PEGASSO vs EL SAGRADO, PÓLVORA Y MISTERIOSO and it was a bunch of fun. Then we had NIEBLA ROJA, ÁNGEL DE ORO Y SOBERANO vs SANSÓN, CUATRERO Y FORASTERO and this was also great, the future is bright for CMLL is terms of work with all these good young workers. Just keep WWE away. The Dinamitas are going to be the next big rudo trio for CMLL and should be involved in many quality matches. Next up is a match forwarding the Casas-Adonis feud. The "Negro" chants and pops when he makes comebacks are so great. This isn't the in-ring highlight of Negro's career but to hear the response for him against this dirty Trump-loving rudo who took Blue Panther's hair is so cool after all these years.

2017 is waking up on a Saturday morning, having a few hours to kill, and having easy instant access to the previous night's CMLL Arena Mexico show and the NJPW show from 3am last night. This may not be the best time ever to be a fan in terms of quality of the worldwide product, but god it's pretty great.

I will say that, ignoring the morality of Angle wrestling, I really admire WWE for pulling out all the stops to put on a worthy show for the people who bought tickets for this one. Taking a family of 4 and sitting lower deck will run you about $500 nowadays. So for all the talk of WWE not respecting their fans, props to them for trying to make things right.

Have to hope Angle just does some suplexes and then takes a safe chair shot and lays on the floor for most of it or something like that.

That's an interesting counter to what I've always thought. I'll have to look at that. I do think TV ratings started declining pretty sharply after the double turn but again I'd have to check old Observers.

God bless Dave for going with Dave Brown and Jerry Jarretr.

Damn this CMLL clipping! This match has a hot start, the crowd is behind Olimpico, and then we cut to the crowd and cut back to Panther beating up Olimpico in the aisle. I don’t know when CMLL banned the blade so I’ll enjoy the bloody mask ripping while I can. The brutality of Panther’s beatdown leads to a hot comeback from Olimpico. This is my type of wrestling. Who knows how good this actually was in full, but what I saw looked like my favorite match of the year in CMLL.

Dave actually shared an odd story on the Observer board about how JYD thought the Junkfood Dog name was funny and would crack up about it when he saw a friend of Dave and he would bring it up.

In December 98 they drew like 30,000 for a Nitro at the dome in St Louis. Just a TV shoot! They brought Slamboree there 6 months later, a PPV, and drew 10,000. It's amazing how quickly the bottom fell out. A reason I have so much appreciation for Cena keeping attendance at a certain level for 10 years, it can turn fast.