RAW (January 6th, 2025) – Playing The Role Of Vince McMahon… NETFLIX!

It’s the first RAW on Netflix… a new era in WWE programming.

And it was… a show…

Not sure what you were expecting me to say. Not sure what you were expecting out of this show. It was a big show, sure… but it wasn’t FUCKING BIG SHOW or anything like that. He’s signed with AEW at the moment.

Anyway, some notes on this three-hour show… because RAW is back to three hours again… so one less show for me to watch per week.

Continue reading “RAW (January 6th, 2025) – Playing The Role Of Vince McMahon… NETFLIX!”

Smackdown (January 3rd, 2025) – XL Sized

Welp, it’s finally happened. Smackdown has moved to three hours.

That’s one less show for me to watch on a weekly (or is it weakly) basis, but let’s give the first SD of the year a shot before we completely abandon it. I betcha it’s going to have lots of fun stuff involving Diet Bloodline and wondering when Dwayne is showing up?

Or maybe we’re just using this show to hype up tonight’s RAW, which will be the first Netflix episode.

Continue reading “Smackdown (January 3rd, 2025) – XL Sized”

TNA Impact (January 2nd, 2025) – Filling In The Slots Left Behind By WWE

Yes, we’re doing the first episode of Impact in 2025… but this one is a little more significant in that it’s the first new Impact to air on Sportsnet 360, the Canadian sports channel that, up until recently, was home to WWE programming and with that having gone to Netflix, that left an opening for programming that could have been filled with MOAR CANADIAN CONTENT… but I guess because TNA is now owned by Anthem Sports (a Canadian group – yes, TNA is owned by Canadians, which would made one-time heel faction Team Canada the rulers of TNA until they shitcanned Scott D’Amore), that makes them Canadian content and thus slots were filled.

So, yeah, while the title might sound like a bit of a joke, it’s not technically wrong. And honestly, it’s a big deal for TNA. Sportsnet has much greater visibility in Canada than the Fight Network does. And apparently, TNA programming was all over Sportsnet on New Year’s Day, which would’ve been nice to had known beforehand, but… whatever. What’s important is that we have a new year of Impact to check out and it’s… another episode of Impact.

See, the move to Sportsnet is a big deal in Canada to a degree, but not so much in America, where it’s business as usual, I suppose.

Continue reading “TNA Impact (January 2nd, 2025) – Filling In The Slots Left Behind By WWE”

AEW Dynamite (January 1st, 2025) – Fight For The Fallen

Happy New Year from your friends at All Elite Wrestling. Celebrate the occasion with a special “Fight For The Fallen” edition of AEW Dynamite from Asheville, to help support those recovering the hurricane last year. Well, that’s a rather nice gesture for them to do. I’ll give them that much.

Besides that, this is the first Dynamite show to be simucast on both TBS and the MAX Streaming Service as part of the new AEW/WBD TV deal that will let them do more of these things. Admittedly, I have been down on AEW as of late, but you know what? It’s a new year (yes, it is) and since I’m making a point to watch all the first shows of the year and doing musings on them, I might as well kick things off with Dynamite.

For those wondering, Impact will be up tomorrow. Smackdown will be up on Sunday. If I have the channel that Collision is airing on (a former Discovery channel redubbed USA Network – no relation), there will be that going up on Monday. And of course, the first RAW of the Netflix era will be covered on Tuesday… and then Wednesday will be stuff. Don’t expect regular weekly write-ups on these things or anything like that unless I happen to like the shows and dub them worth the effort; this is just a one off to see which of these shows kicks off the new year with a strong effort. Dynamite, of course, is the first one up… so it’ll have to be a real “banger” of a show (as the kids say) if it’s going to maintain its crown or something.

Anyhoo, here are some observations I’ve made during the show – not a blow for blow show recap because that requires a commitment that is well above my non-existent paygrade, but just notes on some stuff that I noticed or something. The usual output for this blog.

Continue reading “AEW Dynamite (January 1st, 2025) – Fight For The Fallen”

The Rest Of Saturday Night’s Main Event

On Sunday morning, I posted my reaction to the complete justified actions of one Kevin Owens to the American person, Cody Rhodes. I won’t repeat those here and will instead direct you to said post if you want to read on those again. I will add that if Armed Anderson had been around, there’d be some justice ’round these parts.

However, this is more show to talk about and I did watch the rest of the show, which was a bunch of matches within a throwback setting.

Continue reading “The Rest Of Saturday Night’s Main Event”

TNA Impact (Oct. 24th, 2024) – The Final Push To Bound For Glory

It’s the Go Home show for tonight’s Bound For Glory PPV, which I’ll be watching and musing about… though don’t expect said musings for another week or so. Also, don’t expect any more Impact musings on a regular basis after this. Maybe once in a while, but that’s about the extent of it. I’ve got plenty of other stuff to catch up on, including prep for next week.

Continue reading “TNA Impact (Oct. 24th, 2024) – The Final Push To Bound For Glory”

TNA Impact (Oct. 17th, 2024) – Not Exactly Their Strongest Effort

Show opens with a memorial graphic of Joe Koff, former Ring Of Honor head during the Sinclair years. I know nothing about the guy other than he was a well-liked dude. Thoughts and prayers to his friends and family.

In the opening match, PCO defeated Rhino in a hardcore match to retain both his belts – because even though the Lutte Internationale title isn’t an official TNA title, we’re defending it like a TNA title. I thought that I was watching Impact, not Dynamite. This is followed by a promo from Nic Nemeth hyping up his match against Matt Cardona… oh great, just what we need; a rehashing of the Dolph Ziggler/Zack Ryder rivalry from a decade ago.

Speaking of old WWE gimmicks, Ash By Elegance – the former Dana Brooke – made short work of some NXT girl whose name I don’t recall, but Xia Brookside comes along to keep Ash from doing anything questionable. This is followed by a pretty good match between Speedball Bailey and some dude who is quickly disposed of by Bailey to retain his X-Division title.

Main event sees Nic Nemeth retaining his TNA title over Matt Cardona… no Z True Island Story success to be found here, but this was a pretty good match. You look at the match they had at one of the old WWE PPVs from 2011 compared to this and they’re night and day.

Oh and Kazarian puts on a ref shirt to announce that he’ll be the special ref for the Nemeth/Hendry title match at Bound For Glory. Isn’t it enough we have the specter of John Layfield hovering over this title match already? Do we really need another heel ref to color this thing even further?

I’m at a point where I’m not really feeling the build up for Bound For Glory. There’s some good stuff here and there – I’m liking Mike Santana’s war on the System, going through each one before getting to Moose – but it seems like there’s a lack of anticipation in this show that’s supposed to be the biggest show of the TNA calendar. I wouldn’t necessarily call this Impact a bad show; it remains an easy two hours of wrestling for me to watch, but as a show building up to a PPV… it’s not exactly hitting that sweet spot.

IMPACT (Oct. 10th, 2024) – This Was Better Than Bound For Glory 2010

I’m a little lagging in these Impact things, so rather than talk about the AEW PPV that I didn’t watch or the AEW Dynamite show that I also didn’t watch, I’m going to talk about the Impact show from last week that I did watch.

Continue reading “IMPACT (Oct. 10th, 2024) – This Was Better Than Bound For Glory 2010”

AEW Dynamite (Oct. 8th, 2024) – A Title Tuesday With Only One Title On The Line

Still recovering from a nasty cold that has left me mostly bed-ridden overnight, but well enough to move around at least. I’m mostly doing this from my laptop, so I haven’t touched a proper machine yet.

In any event, Dynamite aired last night for some reason and I decided to give it a watch. Dubbed Title Tuesday, it featured one title match – TBS Champion Mercedes retaining over Emi Sakura in a fairly pedestrian match. There was also a four-way match that saw Willow Nightingale earn a Women’s title shot, a match between two masked dudes that was… a thing that happened, and the main event tag match between Bryan/Yuta and Claudio/PAC that was fun while it lasted, but did not leave much of an impact in terms of interest in this upcoming PPV.

Honestly, a lot of this show was just a blank slate afterwards. Is this the kind of show you put on as the go-home for your PPV this weekend… or is this the kind of show you put when you’ve been pre-empted and you realize more people are going to watch the new NXT on CW show instead? Because this certainly feels more like the latter.

Either way, it’s more people watching this than whoever is watching Billy Corgan’s NWA show on the CW app.

P.S. – Apparently Daniel Garcia also came out and announced that he re-signed with AEW… and the crowd went mild… oops.

TNA Impact (Oct. 3rd, 2024) – Best of Bound For Glory In The 2020s

Hey, where’s Joe Hendry?

He’s not on the show; therefore, no Joe Hendry.

TNA was supposed to hold tapings, but then the hurricane kick and those tapings were cancelled. So last Thursday gave us a best of Bound For Glory show… although it’s mostly best of Bound For Glory from the past couple years, highlighting the current talent in TNA and pretty much attempting to tie it back to the current happenings now.

For what it is, it’s a more than adequate Best Of show. Given that this was a last-minute deal, I thought it was fine. I’m not sure if “Best Of” is the right moniker for something like this considering I’ve seen better Bound For Glory matches, but then again, that would involve talent no longer with the company. So in retrospect, this is just fine.

For those wondering, the matches featured were:

X-Division Championship Match
Mike Bailey (c) vs. Frankie Kazarian
Bound for Glory 2022

Call Your Shot Gauntlet Match
Bound for Glory 2021

Knockouts World Championship Match
Jordynne Grace (c) vs. Masha Slamovich
Bound for Glory 2022

Monster’s Ball Match
PCO vs. Moose vs. Rhino vs. Steve Maclin
Bound for Glory 2023

World Championship Match
Josh Alexander (c) vs. Eddie Edwards
Bound for Glory 2022

Anyway, that’s it. If you know how to help and want to do so, do so.