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JLM

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  1. ROH 21/03/24 Skipped: Lee Johnson vs jobber, Matt Sydal vs jobber, Women's TV Title Tournament semi final: Billie Starkz vs Mercedes Martinez Enjoyed this one. Mercedes the more experienced veteran wrestling the whole match at her pace. Billie managing quick flurries of offense using a bit of high flying and striking, but mostly just staying alive in the match whilst being methodically broken down. Diamante also getting involved occasionally to stack the deck against Billie further. Starkz impresses me every time but Martinez was the star of this one. Dictated the whole thing, made you root for Starkz and gradually got more frustrated and less composed as it went on, ultimately leading up to the finish where she makes a crucial mistake out of frustration and loses. Just pure and simple good pro wrestling, Women's TV Title Tournament semi final: Queen Aminata vs Red Velvet. This was a belter! Velvet vs Hirsch the other week was the best Red Velvet performance I could remember seeing, but she easily topped it here. Incredible chemistry between these two, Velvet a smaller opponent for Aminata to throw about the place in spectacular fashion, Aminata a perfect base for Velvet to show off her high flying skills. The quesadora into 180 spin round the back into a roll up was ridiculous. Classic big woman/little woman match up which ramped up the intensity as it went, Red Velvet taking more risks and busting out more violent and desperate offense as it went on, Aminata dominating for spells with high impact power moves and nasty strikes. Red Velvet has made a fan out of me during this tournament and Aminata is such an exciting prospect, who as @Lorne Malvo says, genuinely looks more and more impressive with each appearance. Kiera Hogan promo! Salty about losing to Diamante in the tournament, wants a rematch. Thought the line about seeing Diamante at home was fun. I don't think "if you don't give me a rematch you'll be getting the silent treatment when we get home" has been invoked in a promo before. Diamante promo in response too! As @Lorne Malvo says, the women's division in ROH is in a great place right now with a diverse and interesting roster, but my main criticism has been the limited promo and character work opportunities. So happy to see this improving. If Lady Frost gets a promo I'll have no criticisms left. The TV title tournament has also added the focus and stakes the division has been missing, it's improved the shows a lot for me. Bears EAT Boys. Lexy was excellent in this one too. Hikaru Shida vs Rachel Ellering This started off a bit flat but picked up some steam towards the end. Ellering is not over but they are working on it with her and Leyla Hirsch. I want Ellering to turn on Hirsch because I cannot get behind her as a babyface. This was more about Athena at ringside than the match. Athena is a bit rattled by Shida. I love that the commentators bring up the one time they faced before in 2014, and it's handy for this story that Shida won it. Athena also mentioned it in her backstage promo later. Similar to Nyla, she is going into a title defense not her usual ultra-confident self. Turns out their previous match is on Youtube by the way, was pretty good: Brilliant promo from Kingston: Makes a lot of sense for him to need a re-think after Okada. Perfect opponent for it too. That's gonna be a good'un. Mina Shirakawa vs Anna Jay Fantastic debut from Shirakawa. Brimming with charisma, got the crowd on board immediately. Anna Jay could do worse than getting matches in against whoever else from Stardom comes over, thought this was one of her better performances too. But yeah, Shirakawa an immediate hit, absolutely delightful pinning combination too. Thought this was sweet too. What a huge win for Mariah May that some of her best pals she's just had to leave when moving from Japan will now be popping over to her new job: https://www.instagram.com/p/C4eY39yJYSp/ Very good episode this week. Only two skips, plenty of promos, Dalton vs The TVs update, two quality TV title tourney matches and a great fun debut for Shirakawa. All wrapped up in a nice digestible 70 minute run time.
  2. Rampage 20/03/24 Bullet Club vignette was great. Jay White had no business even pretending to be a babyface for a few weeks there. He is such a natural dickhead Acclaimed promo was rough. They spent a lot of it talking about more over people who weren't there (Daddy Ass, Bullet Club Gold, MJF) to a very half hearted crowd response. They also couldn't seem to decide if they were doing funny zinger promo or serious pissed off promo and sort of did a bit of both. Best Friends/Callis family was very good, definitely a few notches above your typical Rampage undercard fare. Hobbs looked great, I don't get to see him wrestle enough. They didn't play up Grumpy Trent here, which surprised me a bit as they've been doing it for quite a while now. The fact they seem to be back on the same page only makes me think the Trent turn is coming sooner rather than later. Shibata straight up whupping someone's ass in 2 minutes was fun. Also the jobber's big clothesline got a "Take a look!" out of Daddy Magic. If I was jobbing on Rampage I think that'd be my main goal. Rocky Romero vs Takeshita was a belter. Takeshita's offense is consistently some of the best I've ever seen, but against smaller opponents it is breath taking. He makes it look so effortless that you don't even need to suspend disbelief, like if the opponent didn't co-operate he'd still throw them about just as easily. Rocky was fantastic here too, got the crowd behind him doing the classic stick and move little guy vs giant stuff, a really good underdog. Main event was bloody brilliant. Another slobberknocker of a Willow and Stat streetfight. I still don't ever want either of these two to turn heel or against each other. Statlander has lost a lot by her standards since Stokeley has come on baord, so I guess the idea of them dumping Stokeley and him bringing in Megan Bane or another newcomer in response is still possible. Or just put him with Mercedes. Julia and Skye Blue both excellent as well, with Skye standing out in particular for me. Was gutted when the announce table didn't break for the Code Blue, as it was possibly the cleanest Code Blue she has ever hit. It looked perfect. Still looked devastating and quite likely more painful onto the unbroken table though. Everything else they nailed. Skye and Julia don't feel like they're just rushing between their spots any more; they both take their time and are confident in their personas enough to let things breathe a bit. Even in this match which was wrestled at a fast pace with lots of big spots, I noticed Skye at one point stopped to revel in the "you sick fuck" chants after the tacks spot with a great devilish look on her face. Definitely wouldn't have done that six months ago. Best Rampage in recent memory.
  3. Dynamite 20/03/24 Mercedes Mone promo was not good. Got a pass on the debut but should have had something to say here. The delivery was not great but, more importantly, she did not come across as likeable at all. I suppose the Boss (sorry, CEO) character is braggadocious as hell by design, but yeah, I'd turn her heel pretty soon after the debut buzz has died down. Loving the presentation of Okada so far. The suit, the cold open getting out of a supercar and of course the excellent entrance he's been perfecting for years. His facial expressions are great too, looking like he loves the smell of his own farts, carrying himself like a superstar. The match with Eddie was good but not great. I wasn't as down on it as some, but much like the Danielson matches you know this combination can produce something much better. For Eddie's story I thought it was appropriate that Okada essentially beat him at a canter. That's a perfect Eddie Kingston setback to overcome. He's been playing at being a legendary Japanese heavyweight champion, then got his ass handed to him by a real one. Okada wasn't spectacular but, again, I think he has a great presence and feels like a star regardless. I thought the backstage Mone stuff was a bit better. Similar to WWE's presentation teasing Jade Cargill, I think it's always effective just to have your new superstar interact with the key players in the division. She has no problem with Statlander but she doesn't like Willow. That's fine. If she's going to be this ropey doing a ten minute promo on her own then it's fine to create directions and stories for her this way too. Jericho going to suplex city was fun for a bit, but then he had to have the second half of the match fighting back and teasing the Walls of Jericho, escaping the Redrum and losing to a fluke roll up. The only thing I would have taken to save this stupid direction for Hook would be for him to completely squash Jericho here. Instead he just narrowly beat him, less convincingly than Action Andretti, and less memorably than Takeshita just did using his own finisher. Is narrowly beating Jericho with a flash roll up really of any value to Hook? Jericho will claim it is next time he gets on a podcast I suppose. JERICHO'S PROPOSITION FOR HOOK NEXT WEEK!?!? Yeah that's way better than Hook fighting meatheads every week for the FTW belt. Can't wait. If Wardlow doesn't lay out the entire Undisputed Kingdom and powerbomb Cole a dozen times next week he is such a chump. Why the fuck would he let a one legged little skinny man speak to him like that? Osprey knocked it out of the park once again. Who knew "put Will Osprey on the mic for ten minutes" would be such a reliable segment? Wonderful stuff. Affable, confident, the people love his cheeky Essex boy quippage, hits all the key story points, rebuttals Bryan's last promo, ends on a very serious and impactful note. Killing it. Osprey vs Shibata on Dynamite, yes please. Women's tag was fine. Nice to see Thunder Rosa will have a direction coming out of it, she's been treading water for a bit since the return. All the Swerve stuff was just holding him over and reminding everyone he's here in the wake of new arrivals and returns. Swerve vs Takeshita sounds wonderful but I don't want either of them to lose it! Joe sounded phenomenal as he always does. Adored the main event as I knew I would. I've loved everything they've done in this trilogy of matches. Edge vs Christian being one of my favourite feuds in 2023/24 is quite astonishing. This was so much fun. Some mad spots of course, but everything was milked for all it was worth, and the ending was a testament to just how good Christian Cage is. His comeuppance was prolonged, brutal and perhaps excessive, but by god if any heel has ever done enough to deserve it, it's him. Thought he was hysterical in the closing stretch here. Fun episode. The main event was always goiung to be right up my street and it was almost half the show. Okada and Kingston can have a better match but I still enjoyed it and I am a fan of everything they're doing with Okada. Osprey smashed it again, everything else was fine except Mercedes' poor promo.
  4. What if the wrestler is a chef and/or a cake? Can we let them cook in that scenario?
  5. Collision 16/03/24 Shibata/Danielson was a delight. I loved how during the technical back and forth exchanges and counters they both looked like they were trying to outfox and outmanoeuvre each other. It wasn't just doing a sequence of holds to show off how good they are at grappling, and some of the counters played with my expectations of how that sequence would normally go when two guys *are* doing chain wrestling for the sake of it. Shifting through their game plans in perfect sync, matching each other throughout with nobody dominating or establishing control for any length of time. As @LaGoosh says, the bit where they sat down to trade blows almost felt like them deciding to settle it over a game of rock/paper/scissors, like a tie breaker. The finish was also perfect with that in mind. The whole match gave the impression they could have gone for an hour with neither being able to tap the other out or land a strike the other couldn't withstand, so it had to be that one second difference of one of them snatching it in the struggle. Just beautiful pro wrestling from two of the greatest. Loved it. Actually didn't hate the House Rules stipulation this time! That might be a first. Solid match here, stretching and smacking the hell out of each other. Thought Julia did a good job of showing how much of a struggle it was and how much pain she was in, came across as a scrappy and hard fought win against a more powerful opponent. Gorgeous moonsault to finish it too. Cool Hand/Ruby vs The Knights spilling over onto Collision now, feels like bonus content. Knight's promo was silly. You want to fight me? Nice Joke. Oh you'll get your fight, but not tonight. We'll fight, but not now. LET'S BE 'AVIN' YER! You can't say Let's be 'avin' yer after turning down a fight, surely? What a goof. I hope Cool Hand whups his ass. Daddy Magic back on the desk for Danny Garcia's match, love it. Would have preferred him to be there for the whole show but I'll take it. Short and sweet match. Nice to see Garcia win convincingly despite Shane Taylor's shenanigans and Moriarty winding him up. Damn it's good to have Pac back. Against all logic he looks to be in better shape than ever, he's as spectacular in ring as ever and is sounding incredible on the mic. Also The Black Arrow is one of those moves that never loses its lustre now many times I see it. Danielson turning Osprey's "I don't plan on dying bruv" around on him by saying he and Shibata were both willing to do so for pro wrestling was a great rebuttal. Claudio and Archer was a fun change of pace. Good old fashioned hoss battle and a chance for Claudio to do mad feats of strength. Was more excited to see The Righteous do something other than kill jobbers on ROH. Wonder why they weren't in the tag team tournament. "The Cruiserweight cowboy" is such a funny nickname for Bryan Keith. It's so cute. Like The Adorable Outlaw. He has a belting new theme song which, regrettably, sounds like it should herald the arrival of a much cooler wrestler. Kyle O'Reilly's offense all looked great and he was chuffed to be back, but not especially interested in whether or not he joins Undisputed Kingdom. Was funny hearing Deonna Purazzo call Thunder Rosa "Thunder" like that's a person's first name. HOB vs Infantry was way more interesting than I expected it to be. The beating The Infantry took at the beginning was so rough, Schiavone calling it "a good old fashioned ass kicking", was bordering on uncomfortable to watch because I thought they were going to do a prolonged squash match. Was almost relieved when The Infantry had their little hope spots, so I guess they did a good job building sympathy. They’re certainly giving it a go with The Infantry. Thought Copeland's Spike, and Spike itself, were pretty lame. The match will be great though. A decidedly OK episode of Collision highlighted by an excellent opener.
  6. Correct! DDP’s final match as far as I’m aware: https://www.cagematch.net/?id=111&nr=14764
  7. All in 2024 there will be no rubber chickens thrown into the ring, but best believe HarmonicGenerator will be throwing steaks at everyone until sufficient meat has been served.
  8. With that sort of edgy joke people often mistakenly believe the issue is them making the joke too close to the event. I don’t think that’s quite right. Humour is obviously subjective so this purely my own take, but here it is: I personally believe it is possible to make a good joke about any subject. I genuinely believe it can be done for any topic. However, the more emotive/horrifying the subject, the better the joke has to be to get past people’s natural aversion to joking about it. If you can’t get past that aversion then you’ll just annoy or offend instead of amusing. Edgy jokes made during/shortly after the thing being in the news cycle tend to be of the lowest quality because it often takes time and a bit of reflection to come up with a good zinger about a thorny subject. Not always, but usually. So often I find it’s not that it’s too soon to make a joke about it, but rather too soon to have come up with a good joke. So you get jokes like that one, where someone is just sort of referencing or naming key words from the horrible thing whilst winking and elbowing you in the ribs.
  9. James Cameron’s Avatar is the best film ever made. The one which sells the most and makes the most money is the best at winning in the free market under capitalism, but that quite obviously doesn’t necessarily mean they’re the best in terms of quality. If it was all based on merit then stuff like brand recognition wouldn’t be relevant. It’s not necessarily a preference thing either. For stuff like food and tech products there’a measurable stuff like how long a product lasts, nutritional value, technical specifications, the strength and quality of materials used etc. Mass produced cheap and cheerful garbage will outsell higher quality items because the other items might be harder to get hold of, more expensive, less well known etc. “Most people prefer McDonald’s over your favourite burger joint so they’re the best” is a ridiculous oversimplification. If money, availability and time were no object and people were asked to choose their ultimate dream meal, I strongly doubt that all Maccies customers would choose McDonald’s. At the end of a piss up at 4am when the 24 hour maccies is the only thing open, my favourite burger place isn’t an option, that doesn’t mean McDonald’s is better or that I prefer it. It’s cheap, it’s available everywhere, it’s fast, it has a broad/safe menu to appeal to as many people as possible, it’s designed to be as addictive as possible, it’s marketed aggressively towards children etc. etc. I don’t think McDonald’s themselves would claim that their food is the highest quality and better than anywhere else selling burgers. Measuring how popular something is, is the best way to measure how popular something is. That’s about it. To get anything more useful than that there needs to be nuance. There are countless variables and factors underneath that which can’t be swept away because you’ve decided popularity is the only thing worth measuring.
  10. Yeah LA Park is an absolute mad lad, nightmarish to work with but a next level performer. Even in WCW you could tell he was brimming with charisma and had a tendency towards excessive violence, but as you say the older and fatter he’s got the more he seems to up the violence. Even just the first few minutes of that fight for the name match he is whupping La Parka 2 with no mercy. I need to see some of his wars with RUSH. On my La Parka search spiral I ended up watching him against Glacier from 1997. Five minute TV match to put over Glacier, but La Parka walks him through it and makes it so much more fun than it has any right to be. Imagine watching this match and thinking Glacier should be the pushed guy of the two:
  11. Haha yeah it was an outrageously carny move. Also getting a +1 from Bomberpat for one of my most Bomberpat posts ever is a huge win for me. I will now be Bomber El Patron going forward. Also just to include it, the Super Parka outfit LA Park’s uncle used is fucking awesome: Also a huge fan of LA Park and his sons in their Los Parks gear: Definitely some of my favourite Lucha masks ever, totally bad ass.
  12. Yeah I’ve seen posters for original Black Taurus as “Black Beast” for upcoming shows because apparently he owns that name to get around the AAA issues. Funnily enough given the timing of this thread, I went into a bit of a research dive on La Parka last night as I saw a poster for an upcoming show with RUSH vs L.A. Park. I knew what air raid mentioned was the case and that L.A. Park is OG La Parka but didn’t know the ins and outs of it. So… Adolfo Margarito Tapia Ibarra is the original La Parka. Created in AAA and later made famous outside of Mexico for his time in WCW. AAA owned the rights to the gimmick. La Parka very popular in AAA and quite a draw for them. With him spending more and more time in America, AAA exercised the right to use the gimmick and put Jesús Alfonso Huerta Escoboza (formerly working as Karis La Momia) under the mask. Confusingly initially called La Parka Jr. Some people call him La Parka 2 to avoid confusion. Original La Parka returned to Mexico when WCW folded and was initially allowed to work indies and smaller Mexican shows calling himself La Parka. However, when he wanted to work for CMLL, AAA put the boot down and said he couldn’t use their gimmick any more. So Adolfo came up with L.A. park (standing for “La Authentica” as a nod to him being the original) and changed the outfit just enough to shut AAA up. The L.A. Park outfit has more of a Darth Maul look to the mask, I personally think it looks way better. Following this, AAA dropped the “Jr.” from their second version, so he was now even more confusingly simply called “La Parka”. All the Lucha nerds explaining this are quick to point out too, that the second La Parka was very popular and became a significant draw in his own right, so it was far from a fake Diesel/fake Razor situation. By all accounts, L.A. Park (Si!) had no ill will towards second La Parka but plenty towards Peña/AAA. However, they were eventually able to get back on terms and put on the match everyone wanted to see. LA Park vs La parka: Fight for the name! This is quite a wild brawl with all sorts of shenanigans. LA Park won but they did some dusty finish shenanigans business and neither guy ended up changing their name. La Parka 2 sadly passed away following complications from an injury sustained from a botched dive to the outside. LA Park however, has said that he will never go back to the La Parka name, nor will his sons, out of respect for the deceased La Parka 2. LA Park has two sons, who also do the gimmick as El Hijo Del LA Park and LA Park Jr. Most notable outside of Mexico for being fired by MLW (along with LA Park himself) for stiffing the hell out of Alexander Hammerstone and Jacob Fatu during a post match angle. LA Park’s uncle also did a Super Parka gimmick. Lastly La Parka 2 has a son, but the son is working as Karis La Momia Jr. In honour of his father’s previous gimmick. However, it is thought that if he develops/gets good enough he may eventually become La Parka Jr. Which would also technically make him La Parka Jr Jr.
  13. Rampage 15/03/24 OC/Trent vs Dark Order Textbook Rampage opener. Bit of comedy, fun scrambly bits towards the end, John Silver keeping OC out of Pockets-stance by putting his own hands in the pockets was an inspired move. Loved The Righteous Vignette. The tag team tournament only has six teams in it Tony, no room for a bit of the ol' Dutch? Shame. @Chili has covered all he Cool Hand/Ruby/Saraya Knight/Zak Knight business. It's brilliant, I love it. Like Dalton Castle on ROH, it's the throughline and ongoing story I look forward to on a show that can often just be as series of matches. The "someone I appreciated/someone I love" line was so good. It's silly soap opera fun but I also reeeallly wanna see Ruby and Cool Hand prevail. Storm/May/Purazzo stuff was all good fun. Mariah May is having a blast playing this role and it shows. The spinning side slam with way too many rotations was great, she should keep that. Nice to see Thunder Rosa involved in something other than Collision jobber matches. Takeshita/Komander was, unsurprisingly, rather good. Komander has good matches with most people and Takeshita is some kind of superhuman anomaly, so a pretty safe bet. Takeshita is such a spectacular performer to watch. Anything he does looks as good as or better than any other version you've seen of it, highlighted in this match by the spinning falcon arrow at the end. He should be one of those guys where any number of moves could end the match for him, because it all looks utterly devastating. Main event was fine. My eyes do glaze over a bit when I see Top Flight and Andretti these days, same with The Kingdom. Six guys in a match and Roderick Strong has the most personality out of them. Oof. But yeah, perfectly watchable six man. Another very easy hour of wrestling TV.
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