@WynterStorm24
I really enjoyed Elimination Chamber; I almost cried when the Boss and Hug Connection won and I almost cried again when they had the belts on Monday Night Raw. The women’s tag team chamber match and seeing Bayley and Sasha hold the belts was just so moving, especially after seeing some of the most awful takes on Twitter. I can’t believe there’s still men out there who want women’s wrestling to go back to bikini catfights. I mean…I can, but it’s still annoying.
I had an absolute blast with the hashtag #ThingsLouderThanThisCrowd that trended all throughout Raw. I cannot believe we actually got that to be a worldwide trend. But also, the crowd’s lack of response brought to light a new issue: the lack of recognition for NXT stars. It’ll be interesting to see how WWE moves forward with its promotion of NXT after the rather lackluster welcome some of the biggest NXT names received.
I officially bought tickets for Dolph Ziggler’s standup show and meet and greet. Hopefully he’s actually funny, but enough alcohol will make anyone funny.
It was announced that Roman Reigns will be on Monday Night Raw to talk about his cancer battle. While I’m happy we’ll get to see him on WWE television after 18 weeks without him, I really hope that this is something he wanted to do instead of a way to get a cheap boost in ratings. Maybe he’ll tell us a little bit about his experience with filming. Speaking of Roman’s cancer battle, my friend has just started going through hers and she’s really drawing some strength from the Big Dog. She had her first treatment on Tuesday and then we sat and watched Smackdown Live together. She was definitely tired, but still into it. We’re queuing up some matches of our favorite wrestlers to watch at her chemo induction next week.
@IwanMack
So this week took me to two live shows as I
went down the South Coast for Riptide’s 1st show of 2019 ‘Deep Six’ and to the
Dome in Tufnell Park for ATTACK! Pro, if you want my full thoughts on both
shows then explore the website for both reviews but something I did take away
from both shows was that Cara Noir is one of the best wrestlers in Europe right
now.
He faced Ashmore at Riptide and Kyle Fletcher at ATTACK! and both matches were completely
different but both were awesome none the less.
In non-live stuff, I decided to explore some of the Australian wrestling scene courtesy
of some advice of my friend Jordan of AussieWrestlingGifs. My main takeaways
from this was that Robbie Eagles is incredible and I want to meet him to tell
him how incredible he is, Caveman Ugg is pretty damn cool as well and I watched
Kyle Fletcher vs Trent Seven from PROGRESS which was a fantastic strong style
contest that could have taken place on Japan, it was that good.
I also took in some wrestling from Hungary as the Arrows of Hungary faced Tyler
Bate and Pete Dunne in a really good match as well as Senza Volto vs ELP from
Germany which was great.
@RoxBlackburn
Finn Balor won the Intercontinental Championship. I have fangirled and I can’t get up.
@twf87
The biggest event of this week was the Giant Baba 20th Memorial Show from Ryogoku Sumo Hall, which involved wrestlers from almost all the major Japanese companies coming together to celebrate the life of a literal giant of Japanese wrestling. Baba made his debut in 1960, and established All Japan Pro Wrestling in 1972. He was both a wrestler and booker of the promotion until his death in 1999, and he oversaw a huge boom period for wrestling in Japan. 8,800 fans turned out for his memorial show, and also the retirement ceremony of Abdullah the Butcher, which saw an array of legends come to the ring including Satoru Sayama, Stan Hansen, and Dory Funk Jr.
The matches on the show were an amazing mixture of nostalgia and showing off some of the current top talent in Japan. Rikidozan’s 70 year old son, Mitsuo Momota, won the opening battle royale, and the team of 76 year old Mil Mascaras and 68 year old Dos Caras won the semi main event. The main event featured AJPW Triple Crown Champion Kento Miyahara teaming with the BJW Strong Champion Daisuke Sekimoto to take on Hiroshi Tanahashi and Yoshitatsu. All four men were great in this match, but Miyahara in particular looked like a star, wearing the old triple crown belts to the ring at the start of the match. This show was a real feel good event, and having so many different companies come together for this crossover harkened back to an era when professional wrestling transcended the niche of pop culture that it currently occupies.
Tokyo Joshi Pro Wrestling ran a good show from Shinjuku Face on Saturday, with some strong title matches. Miyu Yamashita retained the Princess of Princess Title, and Yuka Sakazaki (who will be appearing for AEW soon) and Mizuki held on to the Tokyo Princess Tag Titles. The biggest news of the night was that Hyper Misao seemed to have ended her crime fighting days after she cut up her mask in ring and joined the returning Saki Sama.
The combined ROH and New Japan shows Honor Rising took place in Japan this week, and while they were fairly average, the Takashi Iizuka retirement ceremony in mid week was a highlight. Iizuka went out biting his way to defeat at the hands of a Hiroyoshi Tenzan moonsault, and left his iron glove in the ring for a ten bell salute. A fitting end for a 33 year career.
@TheCiaranJames
My week turned out to be very personal indeed, on Monday 18th February I published my review of the most recent Pro Wrestling Chaos show which took place on Saturday 16th February. The review was available for public consumption at 7pm @ ProWrestlingJournal, in the first hour there were retweets from my fellow colleagues and site affiliates. Then at around 8pm the first piece of feedback was received, this was from UK professional wrestler Chris Walker, who quoted my tweet and made a few comments, which I was fine with. I replied and we had a brief interaction, he didn’t agree with the wording I used and that was absolutely fine, there were then a few more who I again replied to, however following that I was then attacked viciously on social media.
A number of fellow wrestling fans then decided to comment, some of which you could warrant, others were just plain daft. I was accused of being a virgin, branded negative, it was said that I only attended shows to write reviews and then the crowning comment was that my review didn’t matter because it was written by a c**t. I personally decided not to respond to the more harsh comments, nor was I that bothered, when they were shared with me I just laughed, because after all my review(s) is only my personal opinion. When we publish our content we are not telling people to read it, we are in fact letting them know that the content is there to read at their pleasure, if they love it fantastic, if they don’t, well that is their prerogative. A few of the twitter community did in fact contact me in disagreement, they did not believe the event was as bad as I had described, and I was absolutely fine with this.
The most interesting part of all of this was the number of people who actually messaged me privately to comment how honest the review was, they respected my decision to not be scared of backlash. They then continued to tell me of their personal issues of why they do not express their opinion online, attend shows or communicate with the wrestling community, it seems that fear is at the centre of all of this. In the last year it seems the quote ‘Wrestling is for everyone’ has been trending and many fans have embraced it, but I wonder to myself does this quote only include those who agree with who shouts the loudest? It seems you can’t give any type of criticism in any form of sports or entertainment. May I remind people that wrestlers are paid employees, wrestling companies sell a product to the public, and therefore because the customer pays the product is open to criticism.
If you want to challenge my opinion and have an open intellectual discussion great, DM me or tweet me. But please refrain from the childish insults and remarks, because if not you’ve lost the argument already.
