Category: Wrestling PPV Musings

AEW Full Gear 2022

Thus we come to the final AEW PPV of 2022… and no, I’m not counting the ROH PPV that came afterwards. Anyway, this was a show that I had zero interest in watching back then… partly because of the All Out business and partly because the card on paper just wasn’t all that appealing. Unfortunately, AEW was in the middle of a rut and showed no signs of getting out of it.

Still, thanks to a buddy of mine, I was able to give this show a watch and for what it’s worth, it was certainly a show… that went very, very, VERY long.

 

DAY ONE VIEWING
Yes, it took me two days to watch this PPV. That’s a bad omen right there.

Jungle Boy Jack Perry (yes, that’s what they’re going with now) defeated Luchasaurus via Snare Trap submission in a STEEL CAGE match. In what seems like a bit of a trend on this show, things started off a bit slowly before steam was picked up and the match ended up getting good. Lucha plays a great monster heel for the smaller Jungle Boy to play off of and having Jack beat Lucha with the submission was something I didn’t expect to see, but I’m not one to complain about a surprising finish. All in all, this was a fun match.

The Elite – back from exile that wasn’t explained on television, but those who know know and those who don’t don’t – did NOT defeat World Trios Champions the Death Triangle (PAC and the Lucha Bros), as one of the bros hit Kenny with a hammer and then went for the pin to retain the titles. This would turn out to be the first in a Best Of Seven series that the Elite would eventually win to regain their Trios titles that they’d had to suspend. No doubt this got a billion stars in the Wrestling Observer newsletter and this was a fine match, but I wasn’t really feeling it. Probably because I had seen them wrestle on Dynamite so many times that the first match loses its luster. Maybe if this had been a one-off thing, I’d be more into it, but it wasn’t, so I wasn’t. It happens sometimes, no worries. Better luck next time, that’s all.

The series would eventually be won by the Elite, gaining back their Trios titles that they’d probably still have had that whole business not taken place. Speaking of which, there were “Fuck CM Punk” chants that were very loud. Anyway, this was the Elite’s first match back since All Out and they hadn’t missed a beat, it seems.

TBS Champion “Thundercat” Jade Cargill defeated “Low-Riding” Nyla Rose to retain the title and get back her belt, which Nyla stole weeks ago and so this whole feud is over Jade trying to get her belt back. I don’t get it; does AEW not have another TBS title to give to Jade? They can seemingly shoot out TNT titles out of their ass given how many different designs have been sported by champions, but they can give the only credible champion in AEW a replica belt to hold on to until she gets the real one back? Anyway, this was a thing that happened. Not going to call it bad, but it wasn’t all that exciting… not when the end result was never in doubt and nothing was done to deviate from that mindset.

ROH World Champion Chris Jericho defeated Bryan Danielson, Claudio Castagnoli, and Sammy Guevara in a four-way match to retain the title. While Claudio was doing his swing, Jericho hit him with his spinning elbow move and then hit another one for the pin, which made for a clunky finish. I think one Judas Effect would’ve been sufficient; the audience isn’t that fucking slow. Beyond that, you have three of the best talents in the promotion (and Sammy was there too) working their asses off to produce a super match that I probably would’ve enjoyed more if it had been a singles match or two. Four ways seem too busy at times.

By the way, Claudio would win the belt back from Jericho at the next ROH PPV… which I didn’t watch.

Saraya -formerly Paige of WWE – defeated Dr. Britt Baker in her first match back since her injury way, way, WAY back when… and it was fine. Look, it’s Saraya’s first match back. You knew that it would take a while for her to get her groove back (and she eventually did, for better or worse) and given that she made it through the match in one piece, I will cut some slack. The same cannot be said for the crowd, who were largely dead throughout the match, especially when the former WWE Superstar Paige defeated the AEW Original Dr. Britt. Oh well. Better luck next time.

ROH Television Champion Samoa Joe defeated Powerhouse Hobbs and TNT Champion Wardlow via chokehold submission to Hobbs to win the TNT title and declare himself the King Of Television. Not exactly forward thinking there, Joe, but whatever – we’ll go with it. They wanted to go for that whole big fuckers beating the fuck out of each other vibe, but that doesn’t work when you have three big fuckers in there. Not a fan… but hey, Joe was a double champ for a while there.

It was at this point where the show started to feel a bit long in the tooth. And so I stopped the show and saved it for another time.

DAY TWO VIEWING

Sting and Darby Allin defeated Jeff Jarrett and Jay Lethal in what was essentially a party match. It wasn’t the most impressive showing or the most hard-hitting, but it was a fun time, particularly with Sting and Jarrett reliving their spotty rivalry over the years.

Jamie Hayter defeated AEW Women’s Champion Toni Storm to win the title. Slow to start, but about halfway through, things started to pick up and the match got real good. Hayter winning the title here instead of waiting another six months was the right move.

AEW Tag-Team Champions The Acclaimed (Max Caster & Anthony Bowens) defeated Swerve In Our Glory (Keith Lee & Swerve Strickland) to retain the title in a largely forgettable match that saw Keith have enough of Swerve’s cheating ways and after a slap from Swerve, Keith walks off on his partner, allowing the Acclaimed to get the win and retain the titles. Their first two matches were better than this, I’m afraid.

Maxwell Jacob Friedman defeated AEW World Champion Jon Moxley via William Regal bestowed brass knucks to win the title. The end result was pretty obvious even if the circumstances were a bit of a cluster. I’d explain it, but my brain hurts just thinking about it, so I will just tell you to look that stuff up yourself and be the judge. Still, MJF can call himself a World Champion; a title he continues to hold to this day. The match itself was… fine. It was alright. The finish was kind of convoluted and if it lead to anything, fine. But all that happened afterwards was that Max brass knucked Regal out of AEW so he could go back to WWE, but not before recording a weird promo telling his Club members that they don’t need him anymore. I’d explain that a bit more, but now my eyes are hurting as well as my brain. Best look that stuff up yourself and grab some tranquilizers just in case.

The biggest takeaway from Full Gear 2022 is that it was too damned long. Other than that, there were some good matches on there and some not-so-good matches, but nothing that really stood out or anything of the sort. MJF winning the title should’ve been a much bigger deal than it came across as, but considering how lackluster his run as champion would be afterwards, maybe this was an omen of things to come. Anyway, still a fine show, but not up to the standards held by prior AEW PPVs.

Next week is Revolution… I was gifted the show… let’s see if it’s any better.

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AEW All Out 2022

Three years ago, All Elite Wrestling was born. And with it came a newfound hope for the wrestling audience who grew tired of the same, tired WWE nonsense that they’ve been watching for years. This new promotion, comprising some new faces along with some familiar ones, would immediately make waves, be the talk of the town, and become somewhat noticeable. So much so when WWE moved their weekly NXT show off the WWE Network and onto USA in an effort to curtail AEW’s new Dynamite show, AEW’s show trounced NXT on a weekly basis, with NXT only scoring a few wins here and there. It seemed like for the first time in years, there was competition on the mainstream level and another choice on the dial for disenchanted wrestling fans who grew tired of WWE to check out.

For three years, AEW was the new hotness.

All of a sudden, Vince McMahon had retired from WWE due to some controversial circumstances and the creative reigns fall upon ol’ McSon-In-Law himself, Paul “Triple H” Levesque. Things start turning around for WWE; ratings slowly start to creep their way upwards, fans are excited about the product, reviews have been positive. All of a sudden, WWE is no longer the tired brand that it had been for years; it was a fresh WWE with gained momentum on its side. Just one night before AEW would hold its fourth annual All Out PPV, WWE held its Clash At The Castle “premium” live event and it turned out to be a banger of a show that I’ve had rather nice things to say about. And that wave of momentum continues to this day, despite the return of Vince to the WWE Board.

For the first time since its inception, AEW no longer felt like the cool kids. They were still putting out good shows, but their booking has been spotty as of late. Rumors of backstage dissention and general unhappiness had run rampant, and Tony Khan looked to be a man on the verge of a mental breakdown. One needs look towards the build to this All Out show, which did not have a featured main event until the week before. As a result – not counting any of the Tony Khan-owned ROH shows and not counting the Forbidden Door PPV, which was a joint thing with New Japan Pro Wrestling – All Out 2022 was the first major AEW PPV that I skipped due to lack of interest, which seemed almost impossible three years earlier.

Then the media scrum happened… and we’ll touch on that in a little bit, but first, the All Out PPV, which I was able to watch recently and… let’s continue.

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AEW/NJPW Forbidden Door (June 2022 PPV)

First off, hope you all had a fine holiday and new year. Second off, I want to give a quick thanks to my old buddy who shall remain nameless to protect the innocent, for he was able to put together a sweet little DVD package allowing me to watch the last three AEW PPVs that I missed out on last year, including Full Gear, Forbidden Door, and the highly controversial All Out PPV.

So we’ll be covering these PPVs for the next couple weeks, starting with the AEW/New Japan crossover show, Forbidden Door; which took place a few weeks after AEW’s Double Or Nothing PPV. I wasn’t exactly sold on the concept, plus key people I would’ve liked to have seen on the show were out with injuries, and so my interest waned and I skipped out on the show. It turned out to be the first AEW show that I had missed, though it wouldn’t be the last.

Now that I’ve seen the show, did I miss out or not? Let’s find out.

Chris Jericho, Sammy Guevara & Minoru Suzuki defeated Eddie Kingston, Shota Umino & Wheeler Yuta in a tremendous opening six-man contest.
ROH Tag Champions  FTR defeated IWPG Tag Champions Great O-Khan & Jeff Robb and Roppongi Vice in a Winners Take All 3-way to retain their ROH titles as well as win the IWGP titles, thus beginning a long, long, long, long, long, long, LONG road to FTR going after the AEW titles so they can hold them all. I think they are still waiting for their shots as we speak.
Pac defeated Miro, Malakai Black, & New Japan guy Clark Connors to win the inaugural AEW All-Atlantic International World Western States Heritage championship in a four-way match. Someone else from New Japan was supposed to be here, but he got injured and they slapped in Clark Connors in there. Honestly, they should’ve stuck with a three-way between the AEW guys, but someone had to take the fall and poor Clark was our victim de match.
Sting, Darby Allin & Shingo Takagi defeated The Young Bucks & El Phantasmo in a fun six-man that featured Sting doing a dive off the entrance stage on top of the bucks and that other guy.
AEW Women’s Champion Thunder Rosa defeated Toni Storm to retain the title. We needed a women’s match and New Japan didn’t have a proper women’s division (does STARDOM count? Honest question) so we got this, which looks so out of place that it stands out automatically, which is incredible. The match itself was a thing that happened. Nothing particularly noteworthy.
IWGP United States Champion Will Ospreay defeated Orange Cassidy in a pretty good match to retain the title. This is followed by a beatdown from Ospreay’s mates.
The debuting Claudio Castagnoli defeated New Japan’s Zack Sabre Jr in a good match. This was supposed to be Danielson, but he was hurt, so we got Claudio. Good pop for Claudio.
IWGP World Champion Jay White defeated Adam Cole, Hangman Page, and Kazuchika Okada to retain the title in a four way.
 Jon Moxley defeated Hiroshi Tanahashi to win the AEW Interim World Championship – a.k.a. I’m keeping the belt warm until reigning champ CM Punk comes back so that I can kick his ass on a random episode of Dynamite.
Forbidden Door had great wrestling and was a good showcase of some New Japan guys to the AEW audience who normally wouldn’t watch that stuff – though the crossover is obviously there. This was a show that if all you wanted was great wrestling and a chance to see some New Japan guys outside of New Japan, then this was the show for you. But watching this months after the fact, I never felt that I missed out on anything more than some great wrestling. Despite the hype and the crossover, this didn’t feel like a big deal. It was, for all intents and purposes, an AEW B-Show PPV event similar to the old Fyter Fest and Fight For The Fallen shows from 2019, except those were free.
That said, if they do another one of these next years, maybe I’ll be more inclined to watch it then, but it depends on the context and the matches offered… and no more of this interim garbage, okay?

WWE Elimination Chamber 2023

Second night in a row that I’m attending a WWE show… it’s a PPV, this time around; the Elimination Chamber PPV or whatever they’re calling it. Make no mistake, however; the Elimination Chamber may be the gimmick that the show is named for, but neither Chamber match is the focal point of the main event, as beloved underdog and hometown favorite Sami Zayn challenges the dominant Roman Reigns for the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship. This was a major turning point in the story of Sami Zayn and the Bloodline and the way I saw it, there were only TWO ideal scenarios that you could go from here… but did they actually go there?

Unlike the Smackdown musings, I did watch the PPV as it aired on the WWE Network and so there’s a little more structure. And honestly, there’s a couple live notes I could toss there, but on a whole, there’s not much too to it. I think the crowd reactions translated well to television. Maybe a couple localized chants from our section didn’t quite make the cut, which is a shame because you had the one guy who constantly chanting for Mami and there were a couple random chants here and there – see the Smackdown musings because they’re the same chants pretty much. But on a whole, no complains on how it was presented on television other than the usual quibbles about the shitty N64-style graphics for the entrances as well as some of the more atrocious camera work during the Men’s chamber match.

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IMPACT Wrestling Hard To Kill 2023

Yes, we’ve used this banner three times before. And yes, if I watch next year’s Hard To Kill PPV, I will be using it again. Now that we got that out of the way… yes, I got around to watching Impact’s first 2023 PPV recently. It seemed like a bit of a tradition that we’re doing here, so may as well continue it for all it’s worth. I had heard some good things about the show and figured, “Why not?”

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Royal Ramble 2023

So this took a little while longer than usual… because as it turns out, I had quite a bit to say.

First off, this show did huge numbers, so regardless of what I or anyone else has to say critically about the show itself, WWE is currently on a hot streak that I don’t think it’s had in a good long while. There’s some good stuff going on there right now and there’s actually a sense of hope that things will continue to get better despite the presence of some stuff that might hinder that a bit.

Now with that said, was the Rumble show any good? Well, let’s dive in.

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WWE Survivor Series 2022 – WARGAMES!

Yeah, I’m not going to spend too much time on this one. But the big selling point for this show was the proper WWE debut of WARGAMES, after a couple years of being largely an NXT deal. And of course, we’ve got a men’s Wargames and a women’s Wargames. Not because storylines dictate it, but because the marketing says so. Still, this should be a fun watch and if nothing else, I’m just happy I could watch a Survivor Series show that isn’t about the whole brand supremacy thing that nobody outside of WWE or its most hardest of hardcore fanatics could give two fucks about.
Quick thoughts after the break.

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NWA Hard Times 2022

Yeah, I didn’t watch the AEW PPV this past weekend. And to be honest, I don’t think I’ll be doing so anytime soon.
I did, however, watch the NWA Hard Times PPV from a couple weeks ago… I don’t know if that’s a fair trade off, however.
So I hadn’t originally planned on watching the show, as I have not been following the NWA in recent years despite its grand return to the Youtubes. However, a week or so before the show was to take place, former NWA World Champion Nick Aldis announces his intentions to leave the NWA in January and offered some damning critiques of the company. NWA Owner and Smasher Of Pumpkins Billy Corgan suspends Nick Aldis while offering his own take on the situation. As a result, whatever build to this big NWA show (which is actually called Hard Times 3, but I go by year for this one) has been negated by the big Aldis/Corgan divorce making waves.
As a result of this, along with NWA announcer Joe Galli’s impressive sales pitch of the show on WOL – gotta wonder what that guy is feeling doing the hard sell for this show, only for that to be forgotten because Brutus Magnus and the Zero Star guy couldn’t get along – I figured I’d give the NWA another shot on PPV. It’s been a while and I’d like to see how they’re doing and also who do they have for their World title picture?
Trevor Murdoch – reigning NWA champion – defending against the former Zack Ryder and the former Brodus Clay.
Well, then… that’s quite a shift. Still, let’s give this a shot. I’m sure it’ll turn out fine.

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TNA Sacrifice 2007

(2023 Update: Hey, kids. This was uploaded last year and published in a brutally incomplete format. Sorry, my bad. So I went back and fleshed this out to feel more “complete.”)

TNA Sacrifice 2007 is a rather interesting show with some bit of backstory and in order to understand the significance of this show as well as my wanting to check it out, we need to bring up a bit of history beforehand.

The company known today as Impact Wrestling began life in 2002 as NWA-TNA and it was, at the time, the flagship promotion of the then-fledging National Wrestling Alliance. Once the major name in professional wrestling, it was relegated to an afterthought once World Championship Wrestling (formerly Jim Crockett Promotions before being bought out by Turner) seceded the NWA in 93 and pretty much buried after Shane Douglas tossed his newly won NWA title to the ground in ’94. And while it got some exposure on WWF television and especially on some UFC shows with Dan Severn as NWA champion, the brand pretty much floundered.

The Jarretts – Jeff and Jerry – were looking to start a new promotion and decided to pursue a partnership with the NWA that would feature the World and Tag-team titles on their new program. So from its conception in 2002, TNA was a member – perhaps its most notable member – of the National Wrestling Alliance before parting ways in 2004. Despite no longer being a member, TNA were still able to use the NWA titles for a couple more years.

In 2007, on the morning of the day in which TNA would air their Sacrifice PPV, then-NWA president (I Don’t Remember And Really, It Doesn’t Matter) decided to sever all ties with TNA, citing TNA’s refusal to have the NWA World and Tag-team champions defend the titles in other NWA promotions… which is funny because TNA was the only thing that gave NWA any semblance of national exposure and nobody cared about them in any event. And as a result, NWA had stripped reigning World champion Christian Cage and reigning Tag champions the Dudley Boyz of their titles, with the World title being the contested in a multi-person tournament called Reclaiming The Gold, which included a number of notable independent stars including Bryan Danielson, and the man who would eventually win the title, future WWE General Manager “Scrap Iron” Adam Pearce.

Meanwhile, TNA was business as usual; as far as they were concerned, Christian Cage was still the World Champion and the Dudleyz (now Team 3D) were still the tag champs. They just weren’t going to use the NWA branding, even though they still possessed the physical NWA belts. However, a couple nights later, TNA would subsequent introduce new TNA championship belts and we proceed to go along on our merry way.

Well, sort of…

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WWF Survivor Series 1997 (25th Anniversary Re-Post)

The Montreal Screwjob celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary… how does that work, exactly?

Your guess is as good as mine.
I wrote a PPV Musings on this show five years ago to celebrate the event’s twentieth anniversary and while I was tempted to go back and watch this show to celebrate the occasion, it occurred to me that I’d have nothing to add to the proceedings in the five years since I mused on this particular event. And so I’m going to do something wholly unprecedented and I’m going to repost this musings, even though you can look up the original 2017 post, which is the exact same thing as this… except for this intro… and maybe a couple other things.
For those who want a full recounting of the events leading up to the 1997 Survivor Series event and the aforementioned Screwjob (or as WWE calls it, the “incident”), the Wrestling Observer recently posted an article called “Reliving The Montreal Screwjob 25 Years Later“, which is basically a repost of some of Dave Meltzer’s coverage of said events from back in the day, considered to be the most accurate account of said events. And of course, there is Paul Jay’s brilliant Hitman Hart: Wrestling With Shadows documentary film, which you can watch for free on Youtube.

But if you’d rather read my ramblings on the event – for whatever reason – continue onwards after the break.

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