@LauraNMauro
This week’s wrestling experience has been about one thing: Velveteen Dream. The Dream continues to go from strength to strength. Watching the NXT prodigy win the Worlds Collide tournament, then follow up with a stylish challenge to Johnny Gargano on NXT reaffirms my belief that the Dream has it in him to be a megastar. He’s shed most of the lingering in-ring greenness and revealed a slick, confident wrestling style with a brilliant self awareness which harks back to the best of the Attitude era. Mark my words: the sky is the limit for Velveteen Dream, and it won’t be long before he earns his first title.
@BrettSG91
Raw – getting better each week, Seth Rollins is a standout performer.
Smackdown – Becky Lynch, obviously. The Chamber build up has been great; it features Jeff Hardy in a potential championship winning position. Now, where’s his old “No More Words” theme at?
NXT – Ricochet? Kairi Sane? Undisputed Era? Velveteen Dream? Alestair (might have to check spelling) Black? Need I say more.
Omega vs Okada (My own personal introduction to the new wave of Japanese wrestling). What’s not to love? 2 hours of solid wrestling, fantastic storytelling and close calls. Gripping stuff, a must see for anyone.
Royal Rumble – 1990 – 2002. One of my favourite match types of the year is the Rumble match, a fun hour or so.
WCW Monday Nitro – the night NWO ran roughshod through WCW and laid wrestlers out backstage (Rey Mysterio thrown into the side of the building..)
WrestleMania 15 – a solid event, which was the first event I watched as a kid. Anyone else left heartbroken when Triple H hit X-Pac with the Pedigree?
Lucha Underground – Killshot vs Dante Fox. Very reminiscent of the old ECW with a modern twist; blood ad violence galore with a brilliant backstory.
There you go, my whole week in wrestling viewing dude!
@BiekoDaniel
Things I’ve seen this week: Undertaker fees for bookings are $25K a time. I don’t know what I think about that, it’s great if you are looking to sell tickets, but you’re not booking him to compete, so maybe not.
What’s happened to SANITY? They’ve gone from a dominant force in NXT to tumbleweeds on SmackDown. Surely, they are worth more than that?
And what seems to be an everyday thing recently, AEW are signing so and so. Will he go? Will she go? Will they go? Don’t get me wrong I think it’s awesome that wrestlers want to set up this shop and have got great backing by the sounds of it, but will they be a threat to WWE? Only time will tell.
And let’s address the elephant in the room, KENNY OMEGA. As much as I am a fan of his and have no doubt about the amount of quality matches he could have with the guys in WWE, I don’t see it happening. Kenny doesn’t need the WWE, WWE needs Kenny.
@RoxBlackburn
This week’s theme is flu, horrendous flu and more flu.
I have a vague recollection of WWE Raw. Highlights include Becky Lynch punching Stephanie McMahon and Dean Ambrose hilarious bit with EC3.
Smackdown Live had an interesting end with all Elimination Chamber participants coming down to the ring. Who will emerge victorious at the Chamber? My head says Daniel Bryan will retain but my heart wants Jeff Hardy to come out on top.
NXT UK review is up. As I said in my review, there is some great talent in this brand, guys like Ligero and Mark Andrews are killing it. But some of these guys are not ready for the WWE spotlight. Thanks Liam for the match recommendations. I’m still on the fence about Walter but I’m definitely more open minded then before.
I watched last year’s Women’s Elimination Chamber match, which I forgot how much I enjoyed. I also didn’t realise how much the Raw women’s division has missed Alexa Bliss. The Twisted Bliss off the top of one of the chamber pods looked amazing and slick. I can’t wait to see her back to a full time schedule.
I read an interesting bit about Vince McMahon and his comments about the current injury ridden locker room. He comes across as a genuinely warm hearted guys, acknowledging that the wrestlers are not cartoon characters or super heroes and injuries happen and they must make sure they heal and that the storylines can twist a little when required. The quote, published by wrestling inc can be found here https://www.wrestlinginc.com/news/2019/02/vince-mcmahon-on-injuries-hurting-wwe-business-650696/ …
And finally, in the ‘late to the party’ category, I understand WWE are advertising an intergender match between Dean Ambrose and Nia Jax at upcoming live events. There are some great ones out there in other promotions. What are your favourites? Do you think WWE is ready for this and what outcome would you expect? We’d love to hear your thoughts.
@WynterStorm24
The SuperBowl was awful, but Halftime Heat was amazing. It made for much better halftime entertainment than Maroon 5, Travis Scott, and Big Boi. NXT is amazing and everyone should be checking it out.
This Monday marked 15 weeks since Roman Reigns’ departure from WWE to battle leukemia. He seems to be doing well, which makes me happy. I actually want to see the Hobbs and Shaw movie, mostly because I like The Rock and the Fast and Furious franchise, but let’s see what Mr. Reigns can do in his cinematic debut. Seth Rollins is also possibly dealing with an injury. Hopefully it’s a minor one as I would love to see my beloved Kingslayer become Universal Champion.
I caught up on NXT UK. I still really like Rhea Ripley and Jordan Devlin. Also, I bought Travis Banks a birthday present. It’s been a while since I had write a non-US address so I stared at it like it was wrong for a good five minutes.
Dolph Ziggler is coming to my area to perform stand-up so a couple of my friends and I are going to go. Even if his set isn’t the greatest, the bar serves great food and drinks so we’re bound to have a good time.
Kenny Omega officially signed with All Elite Wrestling, along with a few other indie names. Your girl is definitely breaking out the Team Kenny shirt for Double or Nothing!
Mostly this week, I’ve been really connecting with other wrestling fans of color. It’s been a lot of fun hanging out in this niche of the fandom, especially because being a non-white wrestling fan can be an isolating experience at times. Black History Month seems to produce some of the most awful racism too so we’ve been leaning on each other and some of our favorite wrestlers of color as we weather the storm of racial vitriol.
@codytweetsstuff
My week in wrestling was kicked off with RAW where we saw… not much happen.
Smackdown Live was more eventful as usual. Randy Orton and Mustafa Ali had a top tier match which left Mustafa Ali with a gnarly black eye, ouch! Daniel Bryan and Jeff Hardy had a very solid no contest match and left me wanting more at Elimination Chamber.
205 Live was great as always and we found out that it will be Akira Tozawa taking on Buddy Murphy at Elimination Chamber.
NXT was excellent. We had the debut of Eric Bugenhagen who in the couple of minutes during his entrance has already provided some brilliant air guitar moves and heavy metal screams. We also saw Matt Riddle vs Drew Gulak. What a match. Gulak’s technical genius and Riddle’s overness with the crowd led to an absolutely incredible match. Drew Gulak may be my favourite cruiserweight in the company at the moment, the man is absolutely killing it.
My week ended with the AEW Double or Nothing pool party. Some huge announcements were made and quite a few matches for Double or Nothing are coming into fruition. The ‘party’ was kicked off with Sonny Kiss and ended with Kenny Omega. Finally, Kenny Omega has arrived and as the fourth Executive Vice President so I expect to see a lot more of him.
Best Friends (Chuck Taylor and Trent Baretta) arrived in their best Scott Hall cosplay and the Lucha Brothers answered the Young Bucks’ challenge from Being The Elite. Well, they more than answered the challenge. The Lucha Brothers proceeded to attack the Young Bucks in what I assume is a setup for a match that will be announced for Double or Nothing sometime in the near future.
Chris Jericho attacked Kenny Omega… Alpha vs Omega II? Other notable moments included the announcements of talent such as Sammy Guevara, Aja Kong, Yuka Sakasaki & Kylie Rae as well as a partnership with lucha promotion, AAA. A very good week in wrestling indeed.
@RyanArmstorm
Raw and Smackdown started the week. The pace is slowly getting there but I am yet to feel the Mania build. Hopefully this will start in the coming weeks!
Seeing the news of Jimmy Havoc signing for AEW. This is fantastic and I imagine we will find out a lot on what people can and can’t do once he performs with them especially in this country. No more progress?
Attended Reach Wrestling’s Thursday Night Reach. A fantastic company based in Plymouth that are in their first year of operating and this was the 4th event they have held and I think things are only going to get better. The guys in charge know what they are doing and are bringing in a lot of known talent from around the UK. Main event headlined by British wrestling legend Jody Fleisch against Charlie Sterling which was a phenomenal match and showing that Charlie Sterling will be a big hit around the UK soon enough.
Ending the week catching up with more AEW news which again is fantastic for these guys and I look forward to seeing how things go for them this year
@Iwanmack
So this week, I travelled up to Fight Club Pro for my first
away trip of 2019.
Although it was cold outside, the action was red hot inside with great matches
like Team FCP consisting of Jordan Devlin, Travis Banks and Dan Moloney losing
to the Schudenfreude team of Chris Brookes, Timothy Thatcher and Lucky Kid in
an all action 6-man tag team match which Devlin was the highlight of; Will
Ospreay def. Kyle Fletcher in an absolute stormer of a contest which should
serve as evidence to why Kyle Fletcher can be a major singles star all up and
down the country; Shigehiro Irie initiated into Beast Mode to defeat Mike
Bailey, Shane Strickland and El Phantasmo in a crazy 4 way dance and Mark Davis
def. WALTER in absolute war of a main event that served as the farewell to
WALTER in FCP it seemed like. A really good show overall and a good start to
the year for Fight Club Pro.
Unfortunately, the same can not be said for the next days event as I dragged my
lifeless carcass of a body to Coventry along with my friends Chris and Kyle to
head to Kamikaze Pro’s first show of the year. Like I mentioned, I was tired as
anything after going to the Giffard the night before. It was also so bloody
cold and I couldn’t wait to warm up which I unfortunately wasn’t able to do
throughout the show. Whilst the show was very good and excellent in some
places, especially a fantastic Anti-Fun Police vs CCBlaaahhh match which I
highly recommend, what ruined the show was the drunken idiots of fans behind me
and around the venue who made sure the show was about them and deciding to bust
out some truly dodgy stuff, bad chanting and acting like idiots.
Overall though, it was a fun weekender but very draining at the same time
through the amount of travel and lack of sleep. Maybe I’m not as young as I
used be.
@twf87
Lots of big news came out this week, starting with AEW holding a press conference in Las Vegas, where they announced a number of new signings ahead of Double Or Nothing. The biggest announcement of the night was Kenny Omega making it official that he would be joining his friends from The Elite in AEW. Honestly I would have been more surprised if he hadn’t gone to AEW, but at least this puts to bed the rumours about Kenny possibly turning up in WWE. AEW also announced the signing of Kylie Rae and Nyla Rose for their women’s division, as well as the appearances of Aja Kong and Yuka Sakazaki at Double Or Nothing. Rae and Rose both look like good signings based on who’s available right now – I saw Rae in Stardom last year and Rose in Marvelous, and they both looked good. It seems like AEW will probably end up with a partnership with DDT, based on some comments from Sanshiro Takagi and their bringing Yuka over for the show, so Kota Ibushi may also be coming onboard at some point. I think AEW working with Japanese promotions rather than trying to poach talent from them makes much more sense. It seems like Kenny still has the ability to work New Japan dates going forward, but what it means for the relationship between AEW and NJPW remains to be seen.
This week also saw Kris Wolf announced her retirement from wrestling at the end of her current tour, citing past concussions and a desire to protect her health now that she has just married her partner. The first foreigner to come through the Stardom dojo, Kris was one of the people who first got me into Stardom, and joshi wrestling as a whole, and I’m going to miss her a lot. I haven’t seen too much of her stuff post-Stardom, but from all accounts she had a good run in wXw and Eve. Her promos in Stardom are a real highlight, and anyone who has Stardom World should go back and rewatch some of her classic stuff.
Meanwhile in Stardom it was announced that a new member would be joining Oedo Tai, which might be a traitor from another unit. This set off a lot of speculation as to who the traitor might be, until this new X made their first appearance at a show on February 9th, wearing a mask. It’s still unclear exactly who X might be, but all signs now seem to point toward Cassandra Miyagi, formerly of Sendai Girls’, who became a free agent at the end of January.
