Wrestling PPV Musings – Page 22

WWE Evolution (Oct. 2018 PPV)

I could have added a more flattering picture of Cold Ronda, but that’d be an impossible task.

Welp… so, here we are. From October 2018, the WWE’s first and (thus far) only all-women PPV featuring women’s matches and such.

So here’s the deal; 2018 was the year WWE started doing shows in Saudi Arabia, beginning with the Oil Rumble early on. People were upset because, among other things we won’t get into here, women weren’t allowed to compete in the country. So in what was clearly a carefully-planned public relations move to try and curtail any negative press from those Saudi shows, WWE concocted this all-women Evolution show to try and get people talking. Apparently, it was a success – or so people say – but beyond this one show, there was never another Evolution show… probably because the Saudis eventually allowed WWE to have one women’s match on their WWE Blood Money shows.

Or maybe it’s because of someone else… I don’t know. I might be giving it away.

Anyway, I don’t know why they didn’t do another show. I could venture guess and assume they’re waiting for Cold Ronda to come back from hibernation before they hold another one because she’s the real draw… next to Charlotte, of course. Honestly, there are a lot of ideas that they’ve tried with the Network that seemed good on paper and even partly in execution, but were promptly forgotten about and discarded as such. But I can’t help but feel a bit cynical about this show and the circumstances that led to its one outing. As much as as the women praised the event and wanted another one, the belief that this was a purely PR-driven move and not something that was thought up with any genuine interest had kept me from giving this the time of day.

Years have passed and, for better or worse, I decided to give this a shot and see if it was really as good as people made it out to be. Partly because of the bad taste left by that match from that TNA show last week, partly because of the NWA women’s show coming, and also partly because of the possible rumor that Queen Of The Ring will happen and have some presence at the next Blood Money event in Saudi Arabia. So, hey, why not?

And no, I will NEVER watch any of the Blood Money PPVs. Only reason I saw the first one because I was bed-ridden and didn’t have the clicker. All the rest can go fly a kite for all I care.

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TNA One Night Only – Knockouts Knockdown IV (2016)

Did you folks know that to this day, I have yet to see that Evolution show that WWE put out a couple years ago? The all-female show that was headlined by Cold Ronda defending against one of the Bella twins was apparently a big success, but not enough to warrant another show… probably because they are waiting for Cold Ronda to come back so she can main event it. I never got around to seeing it and it was just a complete afterthought. People tell me it was a good show and I try to make a point to watch it, but never do… probably because I come across something on the network that intrigues me a hell of a lot more.

However, I did see TNA’s fourth Knockouts Knockdown One night only PPV from 2016… a concept that makes no sense since a lot of these so-called One Night Only shows are annual traditions. The Knockouts Knockdown is the series of women-only PPV and today’s show – the fourth in the series – isn’t as good as Evolution is supposed to be. How do I know this? Because this is the show with Shelly and Rebel.

Yes, that match.

I guess I’ll make a point to watch Evolution for next week, then.

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NXT TakeOver: In Your House 2021

Last year, NXT did an empty arena In Your House-style throwback show… and apparently, people liked it so much that they did another one last year. Anyway, I recently dug up the old WWF In Your House musings I wrote a couple years back during the pandemic days and posted them on the blog. As it turned out, said NXT In Your House was also included as part of the package and since I did watch that one, it’s only fair that I give this show a fair shake, especially if they end up doing another one this year.

So consider this a bit of a bonus musings of sorts.

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WWE Money In The Bank 2021

So I saw the Money In The Bank PPV… the first WWE PPV in a good long while to have a full capacity crowd… and while the crowd made the show more exciting and tolerable to a certain extent, it didn’t change the fact that at the end of the day, this was a WWE show, where you can expect some great wrestling matches to go along with some questionable booking and even more questionable production choices.

As a precautionary measure, I sampled the Smackdown show and wasn’t all that impressed. Started with a strong tag match, but then slowly became another WWE show. Fortunately, Money In The Bank proved a much better show, though nowhere near the level of some of the recent AEW efforts or even some of the true exceptional WWF shows of the past, but indeed a step above the Thunderdome stuff and certainly better than those empty Performance Center shows which are just SAD to watch.

A large part of it is production; the computer graphics that they apply look cheap and horrid, the camerawork is still somewhat poor, as is the constant cutting. And the brand new set – the one that Stephanie McMahon claimed would freshen up the show – is just a giant video screen. Nothing special or elaborate about it – it’s just a bigger screen and feels like every other lazily put together WWE setpiece of the past two decades.

And of course… the booking.

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WCW Slamboree 2000

For the uninitiated, this is the show that featured the sole main event of one-time WCW World Heavyweight Champion and once big-time Hollywood actor, David Arquette.

Some background is in order; once upon a time, World Championship Wrestling had a movie called Ready To Rumble, which starred David Arquette. Someone at WCW (not mentioning names) had the bright idea to have David Arquette win the World title in an effort to drum up some much needed good press. And so David Arquette won the title in a tag-team match on Thunder by pinning Eric Bischoff, who was not the champion, but rather the (now former) champion was David Arquette’s tag-team partner, Diamond Dallas Page.

Long story short – the move got one mention on some rag nobody cares about and the television ratings for Nitro continue their plummet into obscurity while the top prize in WCW – once something that mattered – meant a hell of a lot less… which, in the year 2000 where WCW was being overseen by the creative “genius” of Uncle Eric and Vinny Ru, wasn’t saying a whole lot.

A lot can be and has been said about the move and I will reserve my thought for another time down the road, but for now, we have ourselves a cage match between current champion Arquette, former champion DDP, and Jeff Jarrett.

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Ring Of Honor – JOE VS. KOBASHI (October 2nd, 2005)

Those UWF shows were a chore to sit through, kids. Fortunately, those were the only UWF shows we had to sit through and I thought that I had picked a nice little palette cleanser for this week’s musings. And that’s where today’s show comes into play… from Ring Of Honor circa 2005 and aired on The Fight Network ages ago – thus allowing me to preserve the event onto DVD-R, including commercials – today’s show doesn’t shy away from what the main event is going to be: Samoa Joe vs. Japanese legend Kenta Kobashi.

At the time, this was hailed as one of the best matches on U.S. professional wrestling soil. And seeing this match for the first time, it certainly had enough to live up to that hype because I had a ball with that match. However, much time has passed and one has to ask; Is Joe Vs. Kobashi still one of the best matches in U.S. professional wrestling history? Or has it lost its luster?

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UWF Blackjack Brawl (September 1994)

Last week, we looked at Herb Abrams’ UWF’s Beach Brawl PPV event, which was… something. This week, we’re looking at their 1994 event, Blackjack Brawl.

Technically speaking, Blackjack Brawl is not a PPV. It’s more of a television special that they put on free television… because god forbid the world be subjected to another Herb Abrams-promoted PPV event that people had to pay for. But, yes, kids. We are doing the OTHER UWF supershow thing that was also on Youtube and I made a recording of for future reference… although much like the previous show, the show is still on Youtube for the world to suffer through.

Well…

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UWF Beach Brawl (June 1991)

You want to talk about old, obscure shit… witness Beach Brawl from 1991, courtesy of the Universal Wrestling Federation… from Herb Abrams.

Oh yes… we are going into the deep end here. The outlaw promotion founded by Herb Abrams and assuming the name once used by Bill Watts’ Mid-South promotion, promising to bring wrestling back to the way it used to be… which probably meant a lot of half empty houses, lots of bad wrestling, poor production, and a rather healthy drug-fueled lifestyle. And so much like Bill Watts’ UWF, Herb Abrams’ UWF also eventually went bye-bye… which probably would’ve happened anyway considering Abrams’ passing in 1996.

But yes, the UWF had a PPV event that somebody would eventually – decades later – upload to Youtube and somewhere along the way, I had managed to record the event on DVD-R through my old set-up… long story. And then I did this write-up… promptly forgot about it… and just got back to it now… so I figured…”Why not give this show another shot?”

Then I found out why I never gave it another shot.

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TNA No Surrender 2006

Yeah, so I watched another TNA PPV. Actually had a couple of these on old DVD-Rs, which is funny because I don’t seem to recall actually watching the show at the time. I did see the big announcement that was hyped up, but I’ll save that for the end… assuming the custom banner doesn’t spoil it when I get around to doing it.

(Oops, too late.)

In any event, I’ve got this and a couple PPVs on DVD-R that I gave a watch and wrote musings on… maybe I’ll get around to doing those TNA DVDs that I got stashed away somewhere.

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AEW Double Or Nothing 2021

Yeah, I know… it’s a little late, but other stuff came up, as they usually do on Sundays. Besides, you can afford one less DON musings among many others on Monday, so whatever…

For what it’s worth, I saw the show the night after but avoided spoilers for the most part… but yeah, the first AEW PPV with a full crowd and following a go-home show that is the first of several to be pre-empted to the Friday night death slot for the month of June due to playoffs and all, which is going to suck tremendously… but that’s another story for another time.

Right now, let’s just enjoy this AEW show, which has a bunch of big matches, fun matches, and whatever the hell Cody Rhodes is doing.

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