Author: Colette Arrand

Wrestling Review: WWE Raw (11/17/14)

Last week, the WWE inexplicably decided to turn Ryback heel and face within the span of the evening, shortly after bringing him back to a surprisingly loud face reaction. Luke Harper stepped into Ryback’s spot on Team Authority, though, so their Survivor Series team is set at the beginning of the show as Seth Rollins, Kane, Mark Henry, Rusev, and Harper. All of the heels. It would have been more interesting, perhaps, if Team Authority was the actual Authority: Rollins, Kane, Triple H, and the security duo of Joey Mercury and Jamie Noble. But that would make The Authority decided underdogs, and only John Cena is allowed to overcome the odds. So Raw begins with Triple H, Stephanie McMahon, and their assembled superteam addressing the fans, covering the evolution of WWE authority figures. Triple H points out, quite accurately, that it’s odd that Vince McMahon gets support from the fans when he once ruled the WWE with an iron fist, doing his damnedest to suppress what the fans wanted so he could run the company in his image. Now, he says, that’s what he and Stephanie McMahon are doing; the evil emperor has beget the evil empire. Triple H says that, without them, WWE would quickly become WCW. I mean, Vince McMahon could come back and run the place, appoint a new General Manager, or we could do away with the long dead, buried, exhumed, and beaten corpse of the evil authority figure for good, but it makes plenty of sense that the world ends for Triple H if he’s not there running it. It’s what he’s been gunning for his entire life, he got it, and he’s never letting go. Like all of Triple H’s raw-opening promos, there’s a lot of good logic and subtle heel work—Stephanie McMahon even quotes Walt Whitman in relation to Seth Rollins—but it’s slow and noticeably long. The best part is that Luke Harper has dropped his horrible faux-swamp accent and is his own dirty, sweaty man. Oh, and Ryback isn’t on a team. My dude the BIG GUY comes out on cue with a BIG GUY WEIGHTLIFTING BELT and has something to say.

Winner of all the fashion awards.

Ryback’s weird charisma is still more evident in his facial tics and mannerisms than on the microphone, but they’re finally giving him a chance to speak. It’s smart, as if they’re learning from the mistakes WCW made in not evolving Goldberg’s character at all during his 173-0 winning streak. Kane continues his good work as a sycophantic corporate stooge in his halfhearted apology to Ryback while Stephanie McMahon cues up footage from last year (WOAH, LAST YEAR IS A THING THAT HAPPENED) where Cena says Ryback doesn’t have a dick. Very, very smart. If I were Ryback and had to sit through half-hearted Cena comedy, I’d probably decline to join his shitty team, too. Ryback continues to assert that the only team he plays for is his own, and you can hear individual people in the audience groan in displeasure because yeah, it’s stupid to rebuild Ryback as a monster face and then have him waffle on whether or not the dude who lives to fight is going to actually fight. Triple H praises him for being a coward and promises to destroy Team Cena. He does so by announcing Luke Harper vs. Dolph Ziggler for the goddamn Intercontinental Championship.

WWE Intercontinental Championship Match – Dolph Ziggler (champion) vs. Luke Harper: They’ve been building to this via videos of Harper’s eyes going crazy, and by having Harper deliver a knocked out Ziggler to the feet of Triple H and Stephanie McMahon at the end of last week’s episode. Seth Rollins is on commentary and Ziggler is none too pleased to hear that his title is on the line. Harper has an absolutely incredible look to him if you can get beyond his jeans and wifebeater outfit (which is what he wore on the indies, too). There’s something incredibly menacing about a gigantic man who enters a fight with a look of serenity on his face. Ziggler gets taken out by Noble and Mercury before the bell rings, and Rollins hits him in the face with the Money in the Bank briefcase. It’s about decimation, you understand? Ziggler struggles around while the referee checks on him. Dolph gets to his feet and demands the referee start the match. Oh yes, babyface fire. The bell rings and Harper hits Ziggler with a big boot (which misses by a mile, but whatever), but Ziggler kicks out at two. Harper picks Ziggler up and drills him with a sit-out powerbomb, but Ziggler kicks out of that, too. Rollins can’t believe it on commentary, nor should he. Harper goes for another boot to Ziggler, who is in the corner, but Ziggler moves out of the way and Harper goes flying over the top rope and to the floor. Back from commercial, Harper has the advantage despite that setback, hurling Ziggler to the ground by his hair. Harper picks Ziggler up for a suplex, then sets him down and punches him in the jaw. It’s all Harper as he maintains his advantage on the ground, headlocking Ziggler and gator-rolling him around the ring. Ziggler’s quickness allows him a flurry, which culminates in a fameasser (no idea what this “famouser” business is) for a two count. Harper catches a superkick and turns it into a black hole slam for another two count. Ziggler is kicking out of a billion things that look like finishes. Harper goes for his discus lariat and Ziggler hits a superkick for another two! Harper goes for another powerbomb, but Ziggler punches his way out of it. Harper throws Ziggler off, nails him with the discus clothesline, and gets the win! Winner: Luke Harper via pinfall (New Champion). Grade: B

Under different circumstances, that would have been a huge match, but we’re building to a pay-per-view and it’s otherwise just nice to finally have some new blood holding the Intercontinental Championship. Luke Harper is the first member of the Wyatt Family to win a championship, which is just odd to think about given how great those three were together. Harper shakes Rollins’ hand, settling whatever Wyatt/Shield beef may have existed between the two, and Rollins curbstomps Ziggler. Everybody poses over Ziggler’s corpse with their titles and briefcases and whatnot, and nobody blames Ziggler for being stupid enough to take the championship match despite his obvious injuries. The announce team gets hype about “Grumpy the Cat,” because nobody knows how to transition in and out of serious segments to comic relief.

The Kofi Kingston New Day promo plays. Lord knows why. But hey, Kofi Kingston gets to speak! Backstage, The Miz and Damien Mizdow make a pitch to Grumpy Cat, who responds as one expects a cat to respond to a human being: with silence. I’m not sure why this is a popular thing and hope that it’s appearance on Raw means that our long national nightmare is over. Damien Sandow continues to steal the show as Miz’s stunt double. And then the Exotic Express comes out because we need to kill this crowd dead.

Adam Rose vs. Tyson Kidd: The Bunny steals Adam Rose‘s entrance, and this makes Rose angry. This is a rematch from last week, when The Bunny cost Adam Rose everything by going to a frog splash for unknown reasons, which distracted Rose long enough for Kidd to get him in the Sharpshooter. Cole continues to stick up for an adult male in a terrible Halloween suit, calling him a “pretty good athlete in his own right,” which we’ve seen zero evidence for. JBL rightfully mocks this proclaimation. Rose wrestles angrily, kicking the stuffing out of Kidd, but he admonishes The Bunny for breathing and Kidd takes over. Oh, Natalya is there ringside because marriage is his gimmick, but Kidd isn’t the focus here. Rose hits a spinebuster and gets a two. The Bunny starts flirting with Natalya. This distracts Rose (because he is an idiot) who ends up in the Sharpshooter again (because he is an idiot). Rose calls for The Bunny’s help (because he is an idiot), but The Bunny is hitting on Natalya so hard he misses it, so Rose taps out. Winner: Tyson Kidd via submission. Grade: D+

They don’t go anywhere with Kidd and Natalya’s estranged marriage because I guess a man in a bunny costume isn’t exactly a threat to cuckold a pro wrestler. Rose tries to attack The Bunny, but the dude gives Rose the slip and starts humping him from behind. He then hops away, displaying some of his natural athleticism, and pantomimes humping on the stage. And then we get a video of people buying tickets for WrestleMania. The show so far tonight is a good reminder that WrestleMania tickets almost always seem like a crapshoot in November. Daniel Bryan does his YES! chant, which hopefully means his shoulder is good. Please let it be good. Please.

Bray Wyatt comes to the ring, his way lit by thousands of cell phones. Dean Ambrose vs. Bray Wyatt is the match I’m most interested in at Survivor Series, so it’s good that they’re going to be in the ring before then—last week’s pre-taped promos were not satisfying at all. Wyatt preaches to the crowd about love, loss, and danger. Poor Dean Ambrose. Minus Harper and Erick Rowan, Wyatt is still a commanding presence on the microphone. He explains his logic in his usual circular way (always on a vague mission of mercy, that Bray Wyatt) and offers Ambrose a chance at salvation so long as he chooses to follow him. Dean Ambrose replies from the back. He’s sick of hearing Bray talk. Instead of charging the ring and fighting, he keeps responding to all the things he’s tired of hearing about. Oh wait, it’s a video recording, and Ambrose is actually in the arena. Bray looks around for Ambrose, who flies into the ring and starts flailing away at him. This year has proven that there is nobody better at making a brawl look wild and out of control as Dean Ambrose, who manages to split his lip. The brawl is brief because they want you to sign up for the Network and watch the match that way. The announcers say that Ziggler was carried out from that match earlier, which might have been a good thing to show on screen. What do I know?

Ryback vs. Cesaro: Poor Cesaro makes his entrance during the commercial break. His task tonight is to lead Ryback to an acceptable showcase match, and I’m pumped because it’s my favorite wrestler vs. my ironic favorite wrestler, even though I know what the outcome is going to be. Cesaro and Ryback go through a chain wrestling routine before Ryback presses the advantage, body slamming Cesaro and hitting him with a splash for two. Cesaro responds with a European uppercut and a suplex, but Ryback gets up first. Nobody at the announce desk notices this because John Cena is Hulk Hogan and Raw is WCW Monday Nitro in 1995. Ryback throws Cesaro to the mat by his head and suplexes him on the rebound. This gets a one count. Cole is kinda worried about the succession plan should The Authority lose, and Cesaro wakes him up by hitting Ryback with an exploder suplex. John Cena is backstage, watching this match on television for some reason. Cesaro continues to work Ryback over, but Ryback gets a Thesz press and plays basketball with Cesaro’s head. This is decent, as good as a Ryback match gets, but the crowd is dead even when Cesaro surprises Ryback with a powerbomb out of the corner. Cesaro double stomps Ryback, gets a two count, and transitions into a headlock. Cesaro deadlifts Ryback into a body slam and takes time to admire himself, which gives Ryback some hope, but this match is all about seeing if Ryback is capable of working from underneath a heel, so Cesaro gets more offense, more than he’s gotten in the past month. Ryback gets clotheslined over the top rope, and when we come back after the break he’s coming back from a headlock. Jerry Lawler calls Cesaro his first name (Antonio), and my heart flutters. Cena continues to watch this match, so the conversation flows back to him and his quest to complete his team. Cesaro goes for a double axe handle, but Ryback shrugs off the weak blow and hurls Cesaro across the ring with a belly-to-belly suplex. It’s all Ryback from there. He shoves Cesaro down, gives him a spinebuster, and is momentarily frustrated in his attempt to hit the Meathook Clothesline. Ryback hits a splash from the second turnbuckle and powerbombs Cesaro shortly thereafter, all awkward muscle, and gets a two. Cesaro slips out of the Shellshock and hits a beautiful German suplex! He keeps the hold locked, but Ryback elbows out of it and Cesaro staggers to the corner. Cesaro dodges Ryback, who charges into the turnbuckle and stumbles back into a second German suplex. Cesaro keeps the waistlock on and hits a third, then brings Ryback up again for a fourth! He bridges into a pinning attempt, but Ryback kicks out at two. Cesaro goes to the top rope and dives off with a perfect Shawn Michaels elbow drop and gets another two. Zero fucks given by the live audience, even for the ridiculous comeback move from Ryback seconds after the elbow drop:

That nets Ryback a two count and an opportunity to hit the Meathook Clothesline. Cesaro counters with an uppercut, then his pop-up uppercut, but his upset bid is stymied when Ryback kicks out. Cesaro goes for the Neutralizer, but the time he takes cracking his neck in preparation for the deadlift is all the time Ryback needs to get him up into Shellshock, but Cesaro slips out of that and gets a two count with a roll-up! Ryback ducks a clothesline, hits one of his own, and catches Cesaro with the Shellshock for the three. Winner: Ryback via pinfall. Grade: B

I thought everything here was solid. Cesaro is one of the three best wrestlers in the world and is capable of putting on a clinic with anybody. That’s what the last three or so minutes of this match were: An incredible display of power move after power move, with a little bit of sweet science thrown in because Cesaro is just too good for words. At the end of the day, Ryback shows he can hang after a year in the wilderness, and Cesaro gets a good showing on Raw. Like everybody else, I’d love it if Cesaro were at the top of the card, but I’m not worried about him at all. They know they have a future fixture in the main event in Cesaro and they can pull the trigger on him at any time. Ryback is being given a second chance with the roster depleted, and his push is more of a now-or-never kind of deal. Backstage, Renee Young asks John Cena about what he was watching on television. Cena, decked out in Hulk Hogan colors, talks about how everybody’s future is on the line. That’s dubious. Cena’s looking forward to the contract signing. Renee wants to know if Ryback is on Cena’s team, but Cena knows he’s on Team Ryback. He seems pretty sad about this, but he told the man a year ago that he had no dick. You reap what you sow, brother.

Rusev vs. Heath Slater: This is a non-title match because Heath Slater is involved. Rusev, who is being booked as the biggest babyface in the history of wrestling but is heel because he’s not from around here, gets actual thumbs downs from the fans sitting ringside, like this is a show being taped in front of a live studio audience at Walt Disney Studios. There is no limit to the awesomeness that is Rusev. Rusev flexes a bunch and kisses his title, because an asshole bad guy shows how much he loves the championship he won fair and square. Before Heath Slater can make it out to the ring, Lana talks about the disrespect shown to Vladimir Putin at the G20 Summit. I suspect a lot of people in the crowd knew what she was talking about. Lana talks trash about Kim Kardashian breaking the internet, calling her our “Socialite Queen” before saying that no American woman compares to her “ravishing figure,” which is really out of character, but whatever. She says she has her own topless photo to show the crowd that will have “all of you American men drooling.” The crowd goes along with her when she asks if they want to see it, and are rewarded thusly:

The sad, straight men in the crowd shake their heads in disappointment while Lana calls them pathetic, because she is the best. This brings out Heath Slater, who is dressed like Apollo Creed in Rocky IV. He cuts a pro-America promo on his way to the ring while JBL gets the gag, calling Slater “The Prince of Monte Fisto,” which I want on my gravestone. Slater takes off his jacket, revealing a sparkly vest! Slater calls Rusev a son of a bitch, and Rusev superkicks him right in his stupid face. He stomps Slater in the back, locks on the Accolade, and that’s it. Winner: Rusev via submission. Grade: B-

Rusev celebrates in front of the Russian flag while Slater crawls around on the mat in his rad vest. I realize I’m giving a really high grade to a really short match, but as a segment that was terrific, as every Rusev/Lana segment is. Grumpy Cat is still hanging out with The Miz and Damien Mizdow backstage. Miz is desperate to do a film with Grumpy Cat. Erick Rowan shows up wanting to play with Grumpy Cat, sporting a Reichsadler on the pocket of his shirt. Rowan steals the stuffed Grumpy Cat Damien Mizdow was holding and wanders off. Nobody knows what the hell to do about this.

The Big Show vs. Sheamus: The Big Show comes out for a match against an unnamed opponent, but is met by Stephanie McMahon. Steph has been watching WWE’s fictive documentary series Monday Night War and chastises Big Show for being billed as Andre the Giant’s son, because it’s never too late to make fun of that garbage. Stephanie McMahon points out that The Big Show, despite his size and skill, has always been in someone else’s shadow. She wants Big Show to join The Authority, but should have thought about that before spending the summer making him cry. Her offer is to induct Big Show into the Hall of Fame as an active competitor. He knows the Hall of Fame is a gimmick, brother, but he turns her down. This brings out Sheamus, who calls Stephanie “Mrs. Haitch,” which rules. He’s proud to be part of Team Cena and he can’t be bought either. She wasn’t offering, fella. Stephanie tells Sheamus that he’s not an American citizen and that she might, y’know, just lose his visa and get him deported before Survivor Series. She then books a match between Show and Sheamus, saying that the winner of the match has a chance to win a shot at the WWE World Heavyweight Championship. The two do some friendly grappling in silence. That breaks down quickly though, as Big Show and Sheamus both have quick tempers, and the two get to clubberin’ each other around the ring. Big Show back body drops Sheamus over the top rope and hurls him over the crowd barricade. After the break, Big Show signals for the Chokeslam, but Sheamus fights out of it and clubs Big Show’s chest a few times, getting a two count after a knee drop. JBL is hyped on one of these men wrestling for the title, but it’s more important to Jerry Lawler and Michael Cole that they put that aside and fight for John Cena. Big Show maintains his advantage, eventually locking Sheamus in a very cool-looking inverted figure four leglock.

All of this is pretty good, but slower and less important than the marquee matches they’ve had in the past, and the crowd just is not helping. Sheamus makes his comeback on Big Show, but is cut off by a big boot. Sheamus rolls out of the way of an elbow drop and goes to the top rope. He leaps off, but Big Show spears him out of the skies. Big Show goes for another Chokeslam but Sheamus gives it the slip and hits him with White Noise for a two count. Big Show catches the Brogue Kick an hits his Chokeslam finally, getting a two for the effort. Show climbs to the middle turnbuckle, but Sheamus catches him and lifts Show onto his shoulders, dropping him back to the canvas. With both men down, Rusev and Mark Henry hit the ring. Rusev kicks Sheamus on the jaw and starts kicking away at Big Show, and it appears that neither man will be getting a shot at Brock Lesnar’s title. Stephanie McMahon is a cruel mistress. Winner: No Contest due to outside interference. Grade: B-

Outside the ring, Mark Henry puts Sheamus through the announce desk with the World’s Strongest Slam. Rusev watches, then puts Big Show into the Accolade. It was a set-up all along, dammit. The crowd comes alive to chant for John Cena (which, wow!), but John Cena stays in the back, watching Rusev put Big Show to sleep. What a friend.

Brie Bella vs. Nikki Bella: Brie Bella skips out to the ring to AJ Lee‘s music, wearing her clothes, and this has Jerry Lawler very confused because the apparently he can only tell women apart by the clothes they wear. Nikki Bella comes out, and we have an “exhibition match.” AJ Lee comes out non-plussed by Nikki’s mind games and reports to the wrecked commentary table. The fans in the audience chant “CM PUNK” because they’re mutant scumbags. Nikki does some jumping jacks in the ring and gives her sister an arm drag. AJ compliments Brie’s choice of clothes, but doesn’t sound nearly as impassioned about what she’s doing as she did last year. Honestly, that’s understandable. She does a better job talking about the Bella feud than the WWE has with a slew of announcers, writers, and video packages though, so there’s that. Nikki hits Brie with a series of backbreakers and taunts AJ. She tortures her sister, pulling her around the ring by the hair, but AJ distracts Nikki, allowing Brie to roll her up for the surprise victory. Winner: Brie Bella via pinfall. Grade: C-

Their match at Hell in a Cell was much better, but it was telling a different story. After the match, Nikki abuses Brie for disobeying her orders. This let’s AJ slip in and attack Nikki with a running knee. Brie sees that and takes it as an opportunity to do Daniel Bryan’s YES! chant, which is only really interesting here because Daniel Bryan started doing that…when AJ Lee was his valet. Perhaps remembering that, AJ kicks Brie in the gut and DDTs her. She doesn’t care about either Bella, just her title. Very convoluted storytelling.

Big E. Langston appears in these A New Day Is Coming vignettes, doing a decent Jessie Jackson impersonation. But that’s kind of problematic because a crew of white writers are writing black pastor talk for their black wrestlers, with no defined purpose. Just debut the stable, already. Pull the trigger on everything. Stop being slow. Backstage, John Cena decides to ask Ryback to join his team again. He calls Ryback “big man,” so Ryback informs him that his proper nickname is “THE BIG GUY.” Ryback remembers that Cena said he had no dick. Cena says that he saw the footage, as if it was shot in secret and not on last year’s episodes of Raw, but thinks he deserves some credit for at least insulting Ryback to his face. Cena wants Ryback to control his own destiny. Ryback wants Cena to leave his locker room. Cena points out that it’s strange that the dude who wants to eat more is going to shy away from the big kid table. Good stuff.

The Usos & Los Matadores vs. Goldust, Stardust, The Miz, and Damien Mizdow: The WWE has a Breaking News SMS System, and they used it to announce a Fatal Four Way match for the WWE Tag Team Championship. So, as a preview, the four teams involved will be in an eight-man tag, Usos and Matadores against the Dust Brothers, Miz and Mizdow. Even without much of a direction (and minus The Shield and The Wyatts), the WWE’s tag team division is better now than it’s been in some tome. Miz and Mizdow are a great addition to it. Complimenting things The Miz is doing still feels very strange. Mizdow continues aping The Miz on the apron, missing phantom clotheslines and bumping to the floor when The Miz is sent crashing to the canvas. The crowd wants to see Mizdow tagged in, but Miz tags Goldust in. Los Matadores clear the ring of Goldust and Stardust and The Miz, which causes Mizdow to come into the ring, bump for nothing, and slide out of the ring. It’s such a good act that the announcers are laughing legitimately, and not at themselves. Miz goes for his terrible figure four but one of the Matadores (someday I’ll learn to tell them apart, but this is what happens when you put two sibling Puerto Ricians under masks and give them a Mexican stereotype gimmick) rolls him up for a two count, sparing us. Goldust gets in and takes over. It can’t be said enough how great Goldust is in 2014, almost a full 20 years after debuting the character. He works smarter and harder than at almost any point in his career. Mizdow finally gets the tag and hits the ring, getting one of the best reactions of the night, but Miz tags himself back in, getting booed for doing it. Mizdow again remains cool about all of this. Miz’s terrible figure four is thwarted again, but Miz tags in Stardust. The Usos finally get into the ring and go through their routine, which feels too much like a routine because “FLYING USOS” and “USO CRAZY” are rote calls for the announcers. A finisherfest follows, Stardust hits his, and that’s all she wrote. Winners: Goldust, Stardust, The Miz, and Damien Mizdow via pinfall. Grade: B-

They go backstage to Grumpy Cat. Michael Cole continues calling Grumpy Cat a “he” despite his being corrected a billion times. They say she is watching the show, but she’s sleeping the dreamless sleep of any non-fan forced to watch Raw. The circumstances of poor Team Cena are spelled out. Everybody except John Cena is injured due to the evil machinations of The Authority. Next week, Larry the Cable Guy will be the guest host of Raw. Kill me now.

In the main event slot tonight, that time-tested wrestling cliche: The contract signing. For the third or fourth time tonight, we see Team Cena taken out one by one while The Authority make their way to the ring. Ziggler: Curbstomped. Sheamus: World’s Strongest Slammed. Big Show: Accoladed. Triple H gloats about his fortune, saying that The Authority will stand tall because he loves the WWE more than life itself. A touching story. Triple H and Stephanie McMahon give Team Cena a chance to back down and refuse to Rise Above Hate. Team Cena (for some reason not called The Cenation) comes out. It’s just John Cena. Despite the odds, Cena marches down to the ring, looking ready to take on the world. Cena says that his team will win regardless of the setbacks and that The Authority is done. Regardless of what Stephanie McMahon thinks, it’s over, Jack. Because they forgot to take out John Cena. It’s a really good promo, Cena coming with the kind of fire that’s often absent from even his big match promos. He goes around the ring picking fans to join his team. There’s a dude dressed as a nun, a guy decked out as Captain Cactus Jack, and two tiny children. Even with that team, he says, he’s got a shot. His team’s got passion. The Authority is full of suck-ups and sell-outs. Cena starts calling his shots: Kane will go down first because he looks like an old dad stuck in a go-nowhere middle management job. Then Luke Harper, then Rusev and Mark Henry, and, finally, Seth Rollins. And poor Triple H is going to have to sit there and watch it. Stephanie McMahon has enough of that and slaps the taste out of Cena’s mouth. He wants to take the whole team on by himself, but Dolph Ziggler’s music hits because he’s impervious to weeks of beatdowns. Big Show comes down, woken up from his nap, and now it’s three-on-five. That’s 80% of the team, according to Lawler, because fractions are hard. Luke Harper’s music hits, which confuses the new Intercontinental Champion…and Erick Rowan comes down to the ring! His shirt no longer has a Nazi eagle on it, presumably because his conversation with the stuffed Grumpy Cat has caused him to see the error of his ways. It’s a legitimate surprise, one that doesn’t make much sense, but I’m cool with it. Steph gives everybody a chance to reconsider…and CESARO’S MUSIC HITS FOR REASONS I DON’T COMPREHEND BUT THAT I CAN TOTALLY GET BEHIND. OH WAIT, HE SWERVES CENA AND JOINS UP WITH THE AUTHORITY. YES. YEAH CESARO. YOU GO, YOU GLORIOUS ASSHOLE. And then Ryback’s music hits and The Authority gets sad. THE BIG GUY hits the ring and it’s pandemonium to close the show. Triple H stops Cena from hitting the Attitude Adjustment, but he ends up in the ring with Ryback, alone. That allows Cena to recover and put Triple H through a table. Team Cena stands tall while JBL references Don Quixote and everything looks interesting and new and full of potential. It’s a miracle, too, as the show went on in silence for the bulk of its three hours and the main event of a pay-per-view being used to sell the WWE Network to a largely skeptical audience may have been decided by pulling names out of a hat, but I have no idea who is winning any of the matches this Sunday, and that’s the way things are supposed to be.

Rating:

November 19, 2014
Free Wrestling: Sara Del Rey vs. Claudio Castagnoli (Cesaro) (7/31/11)

I don’t know how, but I was sitting in the front row of what was formerly known as the ECW Arena for this match, which is still the best I’ve ever seen live. My experience at live events covers a lot of ground, too, from WCW and WWF shows as a child to working Absolute Intense Wrestling cards as an announcer to WrestleMania this year. This match still stands out to me even watching it today for the first time in a year. I remember everything about that day, the last of a three day trip from Detroit to Cleveland to Reading to Philadelphia. Four days of driving and three nights of wrestling, Sara Del Rey on each card. We were in Philadelphia early enough to go to the Mûtter Museum and the Edgar Allen Poe house. To be frustrated by the lines at both Pat’s and Geno’s and settle instead for a mediocre pizza place down the block. To stand in line at the arena on Swanson and Ritter, waiting, chatting about the match that got me and two friends to drive all that way, occupying the cheapest, sketchiest motels any of us had slept in, driving on no sleep and three or four energy drinks. Sara Del Rey and Claudio Castagnoli wrestled three years ago, but it feels like three persons ago, as if the chubby dude in the Colt Cabana shirt slapping five with Dasher Hatfield and yelling dumb shit at all of the heels never existed. When I see myself sitting there, or hear the things that I yelled, I cringe.

The concept of intergender wrestling was not new to me in 2011. Men and women occasionally mixed it up in WWE—Chyna was an Intercontinental Champion before she ever wrestled a woman, for example, and there was a 2003 “Battle of the Sexes” tag team match that pit Christian and Chris Jericho against Trish Stratus and Lita. But Chyna’s run and that tag team match were built around the premise that it was odd that women might compete with men, break out from their section of the roster and shoot for something greater than a gendered championship. That shouldn’t be a big problem on the independent wrestling scene, but even in 2014 it seems to be a sticking point for some. There are size differences and muscles and societal norms and, really, it’s about realism in professional wrestling. This match, and Del Rey’s entire 2011 and 2012 (before she was hired by World Wrestling Entertainment to train women at their Performance Center), were part of breaking this perception. Every intergender wrestling match that has followed in the United States can be traced back to this one.

From the start, the story this match tells is brilliant. And that’s without the actual story this match is telling. Put in context, Claudio Castagnoli is the leader of the BDK, a villainous stable of wrestlers who made it their business to conquer CHIKARA and were quite successful in doing so. Castagnoli and his partner Ares were successful tag team champions, and they used Sara Del Rey and her partner, Daizee Haze, as a shield, positioning them against other teams that were on the verge of challenging Castagnoli and Ares. Del Rey and Haze were quite successful, accruing enough points in CHIKARA’s contendership system to challenge their leaders, but they never did. When CHIKARA instituted a Grand Championship, they decided to crown the first singles champion with a 12-person Round Robin tournament. Each wrestler on the CHIKARA roster was allowed to vote somebody into the Round Robin, and Del Rey made it thanks to the votes of Madison Eagles and Daizee Haze, who disobeyed BDK dictum by voting for Del Rey over Castagnoli. This wasn’t the final match of the tournament, but it was the most heated: Sara and her partner had grown tired of being held down by the BDK, who promised them opportunities in a promotion that hadn’t given women too many, and this match was an opportunity for her to make a statement against the man most responsible for holding her down. The match has since been presented without any of that context, and it doesn’t need it. Claudio Castagnoli, though not quite in the shape he’s in now as WWE’s Cesaro, was the most imposing man on the independents, 260-pounds of muscle, a man of old-school strongman strength. Del Rey wasn’t small by any means—against most American women wrestlers, she was more akin to the likes of Bull Nakano—but Castagnoli outweighs her easily and has every conceivable advantage. He knows it, too, and isn’t shy. He shoves Del Rey to the canvas and slaps her when she refuses to take the easy way out, and Del Rey responds with kicks that’d cause a lesser human being to crumble.

Castagnoli needs the outside interference of Tursas to gain the advantage, but once he has it he never really lets go. As hard as Del Rey’s kicks are, the Swiss superman’s European uppercuts are just as visceral, catching his opponent on the chin and sending her down to the canvas. The way he hoists Del Rey up from the mat in a gutwrench position and walks around the ring before suplexing her might not seem impressive given the monsters he’s lifted and slammed since becoming a member of the WWE roster, but as close as I was to it, and for how hot it was in the arena, his strength seemed impossible. His strength is certainly why he continues to treat Del Rey as an afterthought, taunting her as he doles out punishment. The match teases and teases an improbable Del Rey win via a surprise pinfall as she tries to bring Castagnoli down with a sunset flip (only to be crushed with a leg drop) or a schoolboy (only for Castagnoli to kick out and complete his attempted suplex), but he’s too strong and too fresh for Del Rey to ever really make a comeback on. A Castagnoli victory seems like a sure thing at every turn. When Del Rey’s bridges out of a fourth Castagnoli elbow drop, it’s like witnessing a tiny miracle just before the apocalypse: Nice, but meaningless.

All of this, of course, makes Del Rey’s eventual comeback feel that much more special. She’s beaten, exhausted, and dehydrated. Her opponent has been hitting her with his best strikes for the better part of eight minutes. It’s 100-degrees in the ECW Arena and this is her third match of the weekend. But she dodges a Castagnoli shoulderblock in the corner, takes Tursas out with a cannonball senton, and dives onto her rival with a crossbody block. When Claudio kicks out, she takes his outstretched arm and applies a cross-armbreaker submission maneuver and wrenches back like her future in wrestling depends on the outcome of this match. Because it does. But Castagnoli struggles and gets his foot on the ropes, and the match continues, which allows Castagnoli a knockout blow with a bicycle kick and, when Del Rey manages to get her foot on the ropes, this absolute nightmare of a move, the UFO:

Del Rey’s comeback from this is unreal—the audio doesn’t quite capture it, but the sold out crowd, mostly silenced by the heat, comes unglued when she kicks out and manages to go on the offensive again, hitting Castagnoli with her signature capo kicks in the corner and reapplying the armbar. It’s the second time, and Castagnoli has been selling his arm, but his freakish strength allows him to lift Sara up from the canvas and onto his shoulder before he sends her smashing back down to the mat… only for her to reapply the armbar! This is one of the coolest sequences I’ve seen in wrestling, a perfect crescendo relying on power, emotion, and positioning, and the explosion when Del Rey once again gets the arm bar is the most genuinely impassioned reaction I’ve seen in on an independent wrestling show. Had Castagnoli tapped out, the match would have been perfect, but he’s a final boss on his last legs, and the big bastard, now desperate, has some fight in him yet. There is nothing pretty about the lariats he clubs Del Rey with, nothing held back from his Ricola Bomb finish. They’re raw and brutal, and the powerbomb should end it, but having been embarrassed by the fight in Del Rey he lifts her shoulders up and positions her for an uppercut. That doesn’t satisfy him either, but this time Del Rey is present enough to cradle Castagnoli, roll his shoulders to the mat, and score the win.

You can see me pop out of my seat, lean over the guardrail and scream in adulation. You can hear the crowd. After this video’s runtime, Claudio gets his revenge, bicycle kicking Del Rey and chokeslamming Haze, but he is soon on his way to WWE developmental. Del Rey had another year on the circuit—she was signed by the WWE as a trainer in July and reported to their training facility in September. That year, though, she was unquestionably the best wrestler in CHIKARA, working a number of matches that were among the best of the year. But none were better than this one, and few matches, in fact, mean as much to me in terms of my development as a fan or as a person. I forget, exactly, what I’m leaning over to tell my friend Caleb as the bell rings, but the conversation we’re having and will continue over the next few weeks will grow and expand as we finish our respective degrees. We talk about maybe doing wrestling school together, but when he and his girlfriend break up he goes to wrestling school by himself because he needs a distraction. I give Absolute Intense Wrestling some money in a Kickstarter and they let me call a match as a try out—Sara Del Rey vs. Mickie Knuckles—and I do well enough that they call me back, and for a year and a half I get to live out my weird kid dream of being a professional wrestling announcer. Caleb finishes wrestling school, but he only wrestles a few times before he moves to Philadelphia to attend the writing program at Temple; I never get to see him in the ring. When I graduate with my MFA in creative writing I take the prize money I won from a fellowship and go to wrestling school myself. I don’t last a night before I get a concussion, before I get so mad at myself for bumping too soft that I decide to really throw myself down to the mat and, in doing so, land head first, but the essay that I write gets me into a PhD program in Georgia, where I am now, and out of an office gig in Detroit. It’s weird, how connected these things are. When I watch this match now, when I watch myself react to it, it’s like I’m watching a ghost.

November 13, 2014
Wrestling Review: WWE Raw (11/10/14)

In the eastern time zone, where I live, WWE Raw begins at 8:00 and ends, on average, around 11:15. This, I’ve realized, is a lot of time to devote to a weekday wrestling show. And I mean that; I’ve only just now realized this. Maybe it’s because WCW Monday Nitro was three hours when I was a child, or maybe it’s because I was more actively engaged with Raw before I had a Monday night class, but the fact of Raw‘s three hours never felt more real, more oppressive, than last night’s pre-taped episode from Liverpool, England. For this, I’m also going to blame the fact that last week Vince McMahon, WWE’s big bad for half of my life, the swaggering symbol of things mattering on weekly television, came out and said that he was going to shake things up. He said this in reference to the WWE Network being free to new subscribers in November, and in reference to the main event of the upcoming Survivor Series pay-per-view, which will pit John Cena‘s makeshift team of allies against a team of surrogates for Triple H in a match that determines whether or not Vince’s family gets to continue running Vince’s company, but he said he was shaking things up, and I believed this. And then Raw this week from Liverpool started with a 20-minute John Cena interview.

I get it. I do. John Cena, as has been said for months now since Daniel Bryan went on the shelf with a shoulder injury, is the face of the company, and when the company is producing a show overseas, you begin with that face. But everything about this Raw felt exactly the same as the last time I was able to watch the show, only it was in England, which meant that it also felt exactly the same as the last Raw to emanate from there, what with its gigantic Union Jacks hanging from the rafters to compensate for a smaller tron, the red phone booth and old Rolls Royce on the entrance ramp to let those of us in America know what England is, and the crowd chants that are so routine and oppressive that, at this point, they may as well be the Goldberg chants that used to get pumped into dead WCW arenas. John Cena comes out, he tells the crowd that he enjoys the fact that they feel free enough in this, today’s modern society, to sing along mockingly to his theme song, and then he gets real serious, as he always does. The Authority is out to get him. They’re injuring his friends, like Zack Ryder. They don’t want to make Survivor Series fair. The odds are against John Cena because of course they are, but he’s got Dolph Ziggler, he’s got Jack Swagger, and he’s got hope. He’s gonna rise above hate, as only he can, but he needs help to do it. So he calls out Ryback, who he will be wrestling in the main event. Ryback comes out, but since he isn’t trusted with a live microphone, The Authority make their way to the ring and introduce their new teammate, Mark Henry. From there, everybody recaps what happened last week, sets up tonight’s matches, then plays tug of war with Ryback’s soul. See, even though he said upon his return that the WWE Universe needed a hero and that he was going to be that hero, nothing that happens on YouTube is cannon, so Ryback says that he doesn’t need The Authority behind him, but that he doesn’t see John Cena paying his checks. He gives Cena a spinebuster, Stephanie McMahon taunts Cena by mocking Daniel Bryan’s “YES!” chants, and we have us some more odds for Cena to overcome. Or do we? This is something the announce team bickers about all night, because Cena needs a team but joining him would be career suicide, so the story of the evening is a will-he-or-won’t-he affair with Ryback’s fresh face turn (and the surprising amount of support that garnered him) hanging in the balance. Oh, and the left-field choice of Jack Swagger as a member of Team Cena, which leads us to…

Seth Rollins vs. Jack Swagger: Swagger is something of an aimless face (further made plain by his manager Zeb Coulter‘s xenophobic American gimmick seeming completely out of place when folks are meant to cheer for it), but he and Seth Rollins are pretty good against each other, which makes Swagger’s normal awkwardness moot. Swagger gets some impressive height on a leg drop and is in control of the match, the Liverpool audience chanting “WE THE PEOPLE” for him, but Rollins hits him with a dropkick. This only angers Swagger, who throws Rollins around the ring like a rag doll. Rollins gains the advantage during the commercial and when we come back, the crowd is bored enough already to start chanting for the announcers, who are already hinting that Ryback might not be on Team Authority after all. Swagger gets the Swagger Bomb in for a two and kicks out of a sunset flip attempt by transitioning into an Ankle Lock, which is very pretty. Rollins gets to the ropes, then sends Swagger to the floor. He rushes him, but Swagger trips him mid-air and goes for the Ankle Lock again. Rollins escapes from the barricade, allowing his security team of Jamie Noble and Joey Mercury to distract Swagger. Rollins leaps over the barricade and shoves Swagger head first into the turnbuckle, which stuns him to the point that Rollins is able to hit the Curb Stomp for the win. Rating: B-

The match was built around the spot where Rollins shoves Swagger into the ring post, and until that point the whole thing felt like the two were stalling for time. The referee calls for the ringside physician to check Swagger for a concussion, but he is pulled away by Rollins’ goons so that Rollins can hit Swagger with another Curb Stomp. Jack Swagger, it’s safe to say, is no longer on Team Cena. After recapping a confrontation between Dean Ambrose and Bray Wyatt that happened on SmackDown!, they cut to a pre-taped backstage interview with Ambrose, who responds by telling Wyatt about his mile-long rap sheet in professional wrestling. Ambrose says that he isn’t anybody’s hero, and that he fights demons and ghosts that are scarier than Bray Wyatt. It’s a good promo, but I have no idea why Ambrose is in the back talking to a camera when he is one of the best on the roster at playing a live crowd. He never shows up live, which probably contributes to the crowd’s quickly deflating mood, and they announce that Ambrose and Wyatt will wrestle at Survivor Series, which will likely be the best match of the night. Backstage live, Ryback flexes and grunts while Kane (who I will not call Corporate Kane) talks about what’s on the line. Ryback says he wants to be alone, but Kane is all like “I’m a business man and this is a business, so let me manage you,” and Ryback is like “fuck you, meatbag,” and now we have drama.

Alicia Fox vs. Paige: Michael Cole says that Alicia Fox is “slightly off,” which means “CRAZY BITCH” in WWE-speak, and Lawler says that she “has more curves than a race track” because he is a 64-year-old bag of garbage. Paige gets a very nice response from the crowd and Lawler talks about how attractive a woman a third of his age is because that’s what really matters here. Fox attacks immediately with a Thesz press because they have an actual issue that gets less coverage than their bodies, but Paige takes the advantage quickly, kneeing Fox in rapid succession from the apron. Paige is wearing Union Jack Doc Martins for Queen and Country, and they do not look like they’d be fun to wrestle in. Fox hits a nice Northern Lights Suplex and quickly moves into a Bow and Arrow hold, which she uses to slam Paige face-first to the mat. Paige kicks out of a backbreaker, counters a tilt-a-whirl slam into a cross body, hits her Rampaige DDT, and that’s it. I guess the Fox/Paige feud is over in three minutes because writing for women is hard. Rating: C+

Backstage, the evil Russian Rusev and his handler Lana are walking around with our United States Heavyweight Championship, those bastards. Stephanie McMahon sees them and calls them over so she can ask Lana if Rusev will be on their team at Survivor Series. Lana says that she’ll have to check with Vladimir Putin (which is such a great gimmick), and Stephanie snaps. Rusev looks a bit pissed when Stephanie calls Lana a “stuck up Russian twit,” but things blow over because it’s time for Rusev to celebrate his conquest of America in England. Before we can get to that, though, we get a promo for Xavier Woods’ new gimmick, which is a James Brown/gospel preacher riff. While Woods is obviously charismatic enough to pull something like this off, coming from a (mostly) white writing team (I assume) and a company that has had its history of embarrassing gimmicks for persons of color that involve singing, dancing, and other racial stereotypes, I’m not entirely looking forward to his re-debut. Stephanie McMahon and Triple H aren’t watching Xavier, though, because why would they? They’re talking about why Vince McMahon is challenging them and figure that they’re gonna crush Cena like they crush everything. “What if?” Steph wonders. What if, indeed?

Rusev and Lana hit the ring to gloat over our fallen American heroes, which is my favorite thing in professional wrestling in 2014. Seriously, Rusev plays the awkward super-athlete so well that you’d figure he was born and raised in a lab somewhere, and Lana, though she’s as Russian as a cartoon character, she’s the best regular manager on television right now. Some chump says that the Kremlin is proud of Rusev and puts up the world’s most awkward picture of Putin, who has never heard of any of these people. Rusev demands respect for and plays the Russian national anthem, which rules. Sheamus interrupts this with his terrible theme song, and we have us a rematch.

WWE United States Championship – Sheamus vs. Rusev (Champion): After letting them clear the ring, Sheamus and Rusev pick up where they left off on last week’s WWE Network exclusive match, beating the absolute hell out of each other. Rusev is a tank, an absolute throwback of a human being who is beautiful and terrible to behold, and Sheamus is one of the more underrated wrestlers on the WWE roster because he is John Cena without a tan: Capable of classic matches against anybody, but stale. Everything about this match looks painful and great. Sheamus starts the match with his hair gelled and spiked, but midway through it is a sweaty, orange mat on top of his head. That never happens to Sheamus, but that’s how hard he and Rusev are going. Hammer blows, headbutts, knee lifts, side kicks—this is a fight, and a very well-paced one. Rusev is one of the best in WWE at selling the effects of a match, and everything you do to Sheamus shows up on his skin. They keep developing Rusev’s in-ring offense, too, as he breaks out a guillotine choke hold that he hasn’t used before. I’ll probably never get tired of his throwback gimmick, but his matches are another story. So long as he keeps developing as a wrestler, he’s gold to me. Sheamus and Rusev continue trading strikes into the commercial, but Rusev is pretty clearly ahead on points. when we come back. Rollins’ goons show up at ringside to watch what’s going on, and Sheamus dazes Rusev with a series of strikes. But Rusev responds with a dropkick of surprising grace, given the man’s size. Sheamus hits Rusev with a powerslam for a two-count and JBL, on commentary, pronounces “Putin,” “PEW TIN.” This mispronunciation gives Sheamus the strength he needs to try a cloverleaf on the champion, but in a nice twist you don’t see very often, Rusev’s legs are too thick for Sheamus to figure out the move. He eventually hits White Noise, but again, Rusev kicks out. Rusev ducks a Brogue Kick and rolls out of the ring, but Sheamus climbs the turnbuckles and dives onto him! Rusev makes his way back into the ring at an eight count, Sheamus is attacked by Noble and Rollins, and Rusev wins via countout. Rating: B+

No clean finish, but eventually the two will get a pay-per-view match that settles their excelent feud. Right now, what’s important is that The Authority has managed to convince Rusev and Lana to join their team. Stephanie McMahon doesn’t care about Vladimir Putin, because everybody in WWE hates the very idea of Russia. But she loves saying the word “CRUSH” like she’s on Rocky and Bullwinkle. Seth Rollins visits Ryback in his locker room, where he is doing some resistance band exercises. Rollins goes on and on about teamwork and The Authority, and Ryback only listens when Rollins brings up their problems in the past. Then Rollins says Ryback can take orders from him, “okay big man?” Ryback’s response: “It’s not big man. It’s The Big Guy.” Ryback is the greatest.

Los Matadores vs. The Miz and Damien Sandow: Sandow is still firmly in “Damien Mizdow” mode, and his impersonation of The Miz is the most popular The Miz has ever been. Because Los Matadores are accompanied by El Torito, Hornswoggle accompanies Miz and Sandow to the ring as “Mini-Miz,” and the Torito/Hornswoggle feud rolls on. Hornswoggle isn’t as good at The Miz’s mannerisms as Sandow is, but that’s part of the joke. The crowd chants for Mizdow, and the Miz is upset about it. On the ring apron, Mizdow is stunt doubling Miz’s mannerisms and reactions to moves, as he has been doing for some time now, only when he bumps for something Los Matadores do to Miz, he has to fall off the apron. It works in continuing to irk The Miz, who finally tags in his stunt double to rapturous applause. It’s a tease, though, as he blind tags back in. Mizdow is cool with it though (the first time this has been true of any tag team in history), and goes back to falling off the apron as Miz takes abuse. He’s eventually responsible for the win, holding down the foot of one of the Matadores while Miz has him pinned. Unlike when he was the fourth member of Three Man Band, Hornswoggle didn’t really add anything to the act, but it looks like Miz and his stunt double are heading towards a Tag Team Championship match. Rating: B-

Dolph Ziggler points out that at five on two, his and Cena’s odds aren’t looking so good. Cena offers Dolph a chance to back out, but Dolph refuses, saying that The Authority has been holding too many people down for too long. “You’re telling me,” Cena says, completely serious despite his being a fifteen time WWE Champion. Cena says he’ll be at ringside, but Triple H was eavesdropping and puts the kibosh on that. Then he does a little dance.

Dolph Ziggler vs. Mark Henry: Usually this would be a very exciting match. Ziggler against any large man usually results in Ziggler bouncing around the ring like a pinball. Before Mark Henry comes out, a video of Luke Harper‘s eyes plays, threatening Dolph. Then Three 6 Mafia plays Mark Henry to the ring, which, honestly, is scarier. Henry throws Ziggler around, negating Ziggler’s speed advantage at every turn. There’s a very awkward attempt at a schoolboy into the turnbuckles that goes nowhere, and another hard-to-describe flying whatsit that doesn’t look good but stuns Henry regardless. Once they go outside the ring, Henry tosses Ziggler into the barricade, but he’s able to move out of the way of a charging World’s Strongest Man, who ends up flying over the barricade. Henry picks up a chair and throws it into Ziggler’s face, giving the Intercontinental Champion the win by disqualification. Rating: C

Henry continues to wear Ziggler out after the match, putting the ring steps into the ring and setting his opponent up for a World’s Strongest Slam upon them. Having suffered this last week, The Big Show saunters his way down to the ring, ribs taped, and the two have a slow battle of behemoths over the stairs, which Show eventually throws at Henry. Show gets on the mic, calls Henry a hoss, and announces that he’s joined Team Cena. We get another New Day promo for Kofi Kingston, who embraces and welcomes pressure, because pressure makes diamonds, haw-haw. I’m glad a choir got a payday, I guess, but man. Big Show catches up with John Cena backstage, who can’t believe Show is on his side. That’s fair since they’ve only fought each other a billion times. Big Show says that nobody hates The Authority more than he does, which is also fair because they shredded a pretty sweet contract the old regime gave him and made him cry a lot last year. Gallons of tears. Sheamus joins the squad because Rusev, handshakes are had, and Big Show says “I think business just picked up a little bit here,” which, along with “hoss,” makes him either the eager dude in the action movie who gets killed first, or a small town boy visiting the big city gay bar for the first time. Either way, I’m a fan.

AJ Lee vs. Brie Bella: Brie Bella is her sister Nikki‘s personal assistant for the month. Tonight, that means that she was made to wear a suit and serve tea. I’d say this is embarrassing, but Brie’s little butler suit is actually the least embarrassing thing either Bella Twin has worn in ages. Nikki stands outside the ring and yells stuff at her sister, like “HARDER!” and “WIN!” and it’s all mean, I guess. Nikki has a Diva’s Championship match against AJ Lee at Survivor Series, and so Brie’s task is to soften AJ up. The mutants in the crowd chant “CM Punk” because that is who AJ Lee is married to, but the match is aimless and short, so I guess they have to amuse themselves somehow. The Bellas have vastly improved in the ring, but I think my problem with them is that they punctuate every move with a big, exaggerated grunt, like children doing karate. AJ, who has actually been pretty listless since her return, picks up the win with the Black Widow in about three minutes, because that’s what women get. Rating: C-

Nikki gets into the ring and blindsides AJ. She takes off her tiny varsity jacket and hurls it at her sister, yelling “YOU’RE A LOSER!” like she’s trying to score a role on Pretty Little Liars. She then hits AJ with the Rack Attack, which is a good looking, terribly named maneuver. “That is how the number one Bella does it,” she says, but the jersey she’s wearing has the number two on it. Jerry Lawler asks if Bruce Wayne did everything Batman said to do, but JBL also mucks up Alfred’s name, so the two bicker uselessly about comic books because Brie couldn’t follow her sister’s orders and win. Mark Henry visits Ryback in his locker room, and this is the best segment of the night in Ryback’s dimly lit rage cavern because The Big Guy is all weird charisma and Mark Henry is the best in the world at what he does, which is talk shit and be amazing. It’s the best. Grumpy Cat is going to be on Raw next week, so hopefully that meme is dead.

Adam Rose vs. Tyson Kidd: Adam Rose is my least favorite gimmick in the history of wrestling. Tyson Kidd has been the most underrated member of the WWE Roster for his entire tenure. Right now, they’re turning Rose heel by having him in a disagreement with member of his entourage that dresses like a bunny. He keeps getting involved in matches, which costs Rose. It’s actually interesting, which is something of a shock. Rose and the bunny dance around like nothing is wrong. Kidd and Rose get things going, and Erick Rowan walks down to the ring, looking for a woman. This…is the kind of gimmick that gets you future endeavored. The fans are really into Adam Rose’s theme song, more than Adam Rose. Regardless, Rose gets the advantage and the bunny gets involved, climbing the turnbuckles for a frog splash. Rose waves him off because that’d be a disqualification and yells at the idiot, and Tyson Kidd quickly locks in the Sharpshooter for the win. Grade: C

While Kidd’s terrible theme music plays, the bunny tries to make good with Rose. Rose replies to the bunny’s hopping around by kicking him in the gut. Michael Cole tries to say how terrible this is, but dude, it’s a man in a bunny costume, and he is fucking Adam Rose over. A close-up of Rose’s face makes him look like a man absolutely worn-down by his non-stop party, and it’s, again, interesting. We’ll see how interesting it is in three months when they’re still doing a will-he-or-won’t-he thing with Rose and the bunny. The announcer plug the WWE Network’s being free for the month, which seems cruel since the UK doesn’t have it yet. Team Authority meet backstage, and Mark Henry asks if he has to stand next to Rusev because, oh my God, he remembers that he had a serious issue with Rusev a month ago. Kane says that Ryback has an attitude problem, and Triple H starts to worry because nobody is on the same page. Ryback shows up angry that everybody is gossiping behind his back, but Triple H doesn’t care about that. Just go out and crush John Cena. That’s all Triple H wants. He bans Cena’s team from ringside. Stephanie McMahon tries to rally the troops, but egos, man. Bray Wyatt cuts a promo on Dean Ambrose and society. It’s good because Bray Wyatt is good, but the decision to have the two most interesting characters on television not appear before the crowd? Terrible.

John Cena vs. Ryback: John Cena is secretly one of the best wrestlers in history. I happen to be one of the biggest Ryback fans on the planet. This match, one would think, seems right up my ally. But part of the reason Ryback’s huuuuuge push in 2010 stalled out was because nobody really knew how to work with him for more than eight or nine minutes. That’s still a problem in 2014, which is too bad because Ryback has actually evolved quite a bit as a character since then. They play this match smart at first, having Cena try to figure out Ryback’s otherworldly strength, but no match is just its feeling out process, so things fall apart when Cena stops running into Ryback’s shoulder. That being said, the first few minutes are pretty good, and while I’ve come to expect people reversing Cena’s signature moves, I’ve not seen his bulldog turned into a powerslam. Kane tells Ryback to do his job while Ryback is doing his job, and Cena manages to knock Ryback off the apron into Kane. Drama. Ryback pulls out some new moves, both of the uranage variety, but everything is so slow and awkward that those moves, which should get big reactions, play to silence. Ryback goes for his finish but Cena counters and tries to go for his shoulder blocks, only to be taken out with a powerslam. The two counter each other until Ryback comes out on top. Kane keeps yelling at Ryback while Seth Rollins astutely points out that Ryback has everything under control. Then Ryback powerbombs Cena across the ring, which is just ridiculous. Ryback goes for a Razor’s Edge, but Cena counters into the STF. This is unquestionably the best match Cena and Ryback have had (and is maybe the best match of Ryback’s career), but it still doesn’t feel right for some reason. Cena gets Ryback in the STF again, but Ryback muscles Cena up into the Shellshock. Cena wiggles out and hits Ryback with his powerbomb, Kane gets involved, and before Ryback can finish Cena off, Kane climbs into the ring and attacks Cena, ending the match. Rating: B-

Ryback gets into Kane’s face and Kane takes off his jakcket and tie. Seth Rollins tries to break things up, but Ryback decks Rollins and Kane takes Ryback out with a big boot. Team Authority mugs Cena in the ring, so Team Cena responds with the smart wrestling strategy of emerging one at a time so they can all have their asses kicked by five much fresher men. Some of Team Authority’s combinations look like they might be fun within the context of a match, so there’s that. Ryback gets back into the ring after hanging out for a bit and wipes out the entirety of Team Authority, who are quickly without a fifth member. Cena watches all of this from the corner, but Ryback is out of there before he can join Cena’s team. Still, just when things are starting to look even, Raw ends backstage, with Dolph Ziggler thrown at the feet of Stephanie McMahon and Triple H. Luke Harper is there when the camera pans over to him, clutching his denim vest like a proud nerd might hold the straps of his suspenders. “A’hm a team playuh” is what he says, because he’s from the swamp, and Triple H and Stephanie look at the dude real confused. They don’t want any swamp people on their all-beefcake team.

Rating:

November 11, 2014
Wrestling Review: Lucha Underground Episodes 01 and 02 (2014)
I wouldn’t exactly say that I’m in the market for a WWE alternative. There’s so much wrestling in the world, most of it available on demand, that any time I want something different than what Vince McMahon, Triple H, and the rest of the gang at World Wrestling Entertainment are doing, I can watch New Japan Pro Wrestling instead. Or CHIKARA. Or Pro Wrestling Guerrilla, Ring of Honor, and Absolute Intense Wrestling. Or over 100 years of wrestling that has been filmed and dumped on YouTube, both legally and extra-legally, that is streets ahead of anything being produced this decade. It’s easy. Easier, at least, than watching an episode of Total Non-Stop Action Wrestling’s Impact Wrestling for its occasional glimpses of brilliance, or tuning in to whatever cable network, buried deep in a subscription package I can’t afford, has decided to tape their answer to WWE. Lucha Underground is the latest attempt at that second brand, and boy is it buried deep, playing on Robert Rodriguez’s El Ray Network, which, as I understand it, is available to DirecTV, Comcast, and Time Warner Cable subscribers only. I cut the cable a long time ago and I’m not likely to go back, so I should admit, up front, that I am part of the problem faced by most WWE competitors: I’m an interested wrestling fan without the means necessary to pay much more for wrestling than the $9.99 I’m already paying to tune out the current product that’s disenchanted me.

Despite all that, Lucha Underground gained my attention very quickly. Its opening video package, which veers from the ridiculous to the informative and has its foot on the gas pedal the entire time, lays everything out thusly: Luchadores are, in effect, superheroes whose heritage extends all the way back to the Aztec empire. One saves a kid from being beaten up in a back alley, then asks him to help save lucha libre, likely from the clutches of Dario Cuteo, a smooth-talking Spaniard who invaded AAA’s TripleMania event (the WrestleMania of Mexico) to throw his money around ala Vince McMahon, offering the best wrestlers in the world a chance to prove themselves in the United States of America. Cuteo is obviously a villain, but he walks to the ring to kick off the first episode of Lucha Underground, offering $100,000 to the man or woman who impresses him the most. Without delving into the action (which I’ll get to shortly), here’s what you know five minutes into the show:
1. That, beyond the world of kayfabe, Lucha Underground is backed by AAA, which is one of the biggest wrestling promotions in the world.
2. That Lucha Underground takes place, as many attempted third wrestling brands have (including WWE’s relaunch of ECW), in a faux-dirty, Hollywood disgusting industrial wasteland. Cuteo calls this his temple, but if that’s how he really felt he probably could have afforded some clean ring mats.
3. That a briefcase full of money is no substitute for a good looking championship belt.
4. That the camera work is going to be slick in ways that might hinder the presentation. There’s a camera directly above the ring and a foggy, fisheye camera in the announce desk, ostensibly so that the editing team can present the action in the ring with a minimum of in-ring goofs. Still, I think wrestling is best shot using a hard camera and one or two camera operators ringside. Nobody sane demands absolute perfection from wrestlers, because to do so is unreasonable. Nobody is requesting shots of Matt Stryker and Vampiro (the commentary duo) during matches, either.
5. That in 2014, we still live in a post-Montreal Screwjob world. The next televised wrestling promotion to debut without an evil Vince McMahon surrogate will automatically be my favorite promotion ever.
Since I’m getting into the flow of Lucha Underground‘s universe, I’m going to review the first two episodes at once, match by match. An overall rating for both episodes can be found at the end of the recap.

Episode 01

Chavo Guerrero Jr. vs. Blue Demon Jr.: After Dario Cueto introduces himself and the concept that the best fighter on his roster will receive $100,000, the first match leaves aside all of Lucha Underground‘s high-flying Fight Club aspersions by getting down to the fundamentals of lucha libre: Masked luchadores and prestigious family bloodlines. Blue Demon Jr. just looks like a luchadore, thick and barrel-chested, and Chavo Guerrero Jr., of course, has wrestled on nationally televised promotions for years, plying his trade in World Championship Wrestling, WWE, and TNA. Chavo Jr. has always been an under-the-radar favorite of mine. When I was a child, he was tremendous playing the role of Eddie Guerrero’s deranged nephew, finally snapped after months of humiliation and heartbreak. His career has largely been spent in Eddie’s shadow, understandable considering that his uncle was probably the best wrestler in the world from 1995-1998, reclaimed that status late in his WWE career, and died tragically. When Vampiro mentions the Guerreros here, it’s not to garner Chavo any sympathy, but to mention that the family has mostly been hated by lucha libre fans, a pack of liars, cheaters, and thieves in a tradition that holds honor as its highest virtue. Demon and Guerrero work a pretty good opening contest, testing each other with the ol’ Greco-Roman knucklelock that goes through a few permutations while Matt Stryker and Vampiro point out for the fans some of the differences between American wrestling and lucha libre. Nine minutes into the first show, and I’m already not a fan of a lot of the camera work: The overhead camera above the ring is disorienting, as is the pan-and-zoom into the crowd during a Guerrero headlock. Fan reactions are important, but you cut to those while wrestlers are selling big maneuvers, not during the action itself. The progression of cuts from camera to camera is too fast, actually exacerbating things that it is trying to cover up, like a Blue Demon Jr. headscissors that Chavo Guerrero Jr. has to finish for his older opponent. Demon’s got some nice-sounding slaps that Vampiro is quick to point out are “nice, because they’re not closed fists,” because the rules of wrestling still matter. Blue Demon Jr. sells his knee before going for a top rope senton, “a move made famous by his pops,” and Chavo has more than enough time to roll out of the ring, so he does and gets a two count. Guerrero goes for a top-rope hurricanrana, but Demon counters it into a powerbomb, which isn’t enough to put Guerrero away. Demon quickly transitions into his sharpshooter variation, El Pulpo, and Guerrero quickly taps out. Rating: B-

In a pre-taped segment, Dario Cuteo tries to align himself with Mexican wrestling legend Konnan. At one time, Konnan was considered the Hulk Hogan of Mexico. Then he signed with WCW, where the Hulk Hogans of Everywhere Else were made to bow down to Hulk Hogan himself, and he became the Mexican gangster character that every Mexican gangster character since has tried, unsuccessfully, to mimic. His WCW work hasn’t aged particularly well since I grew up and stopped being charmed by sing-song rhyming catchphrases, but he has a natural charisma that comes across in this segment, where he’s playing an aged fighter-turned-trainer who has found a protege who might change everything for lucha libre. Cuteo says that he has a new signing, Johnny Mundo, who used to go by a different name. One of those names, of course, was John Morrison, he of a billion abs and a style that leaned a little on his parkour training routine. Cuteo wants Konnan’s guy to make an example out of the cocky, fame-hungry Mundo, and Konnan nods significantly. They show Mundo doing pull-ups on this weird pull-up bar, then introduce his opponent, Prince Puma. Puma is better known to indie wrestling enthusiasts as Ricochet, but in Lucha Underground he’s wearing Aztec jungle cat gear and is billed by Konnan as a kind of Aztec champion. The way Konnan talks and the slow-motion effect applied to Puma’s kicks put everything over huge. It’s the first show, but it’s pretty clear that Lucha Underground knows how to promote the wrestlers it sees as stars.

Son of Havoc vs. Sexy Star: Son of Havoc is Matt Cross, a contestant on the WWE’s revamped Tough Enough who has had about as interesting a career as someone can have without wrestling for a major promotion. Cross is in tremendous shape and has a distinct look, so of course he’s wearing pants, a vest, and a terrible luchadore mask to cover all of that up. Sexy Star is a fixture in Mexico, a legitimate star with a great look who I am mostly unfamiliar with. The assumption here is that most people watching are like me, so they play a video where Sexy Star introduces herself. It’s really good, given that English is Star’s second language. She talks about how lucha libre saved her life from a world of abuse, and how she trains and fights so that women might know they are capable of the same. So of course, Son of Havoc beats her with a roll-up, and even though Stryker says, in post, that he had the tights, he didn’t have them convincingly. It’s a shame, too, because everything was built for this really great angle. Intergender wrestling is still rare on television, but Star and Havoc are a good match, of similar builds for those mutants out there on the realism train, and Havoc cuts a promo in this Son of Shockmaster voice about how he’s not going to waste his time fighting a woman, so she may as well quit. She doesn’t, of course, but the match isn’t long enough to do what Vampiro and Stryker keep insisting it does, which is to put over that Star is capable of going toe-to-toe with men. There are some good exchanges back and forth between the two, but the match is about the length of an average Diva’s match on Raw, and they should have re-shot the finish to make the pulled tights look like something that’d actually be advantageous in a pinning combination. Rating: C-

Dario Cueto finds Chavo Guerrero Jr. backstage to tell poor Chavo that his family is probably going to be upset that he lost to Blue Demon Jr. earlier in the night. He says that he wanted Chavo to be the one to put Blue Demon Jr. out of the industry for good, but that since he couldn’t, he’s bringing in someone who can. And with him, “1,000 deaths might be coming for us all.” 1,000 is a number of deaths I’m into, and I’m in for whatever that means for the next episode.

Johnny Mundo vs. Prince Puma: They bill this as Mundo’s first match in three years, which it isn’t, but at least you know that the universe Lucha Underground is in only concerns itself with the kind of wrestling everybody in the world is familiar with. So to that extent, Prince Puma is a complete unknown, the buzz about him being that Konnan discovered him in a Los Angeles bario and thinks the world of his potential. Puma plays the SoCal crowd like a fiddle, as if they all know who he is. (They do.) There’s no better main event for a project like this, as it puts in stark relief what this promotion will be doing with its television time in comparison to WWE and TNA. Puma has an argument for being one of the best wrestlers in the world, and Mundo, three years removed from a WWE run that had many thinking he had the potential to be a legit main event star, has matured into the kind of wrestler who actually fits that bill. Puma and Mundo chain wrestle for a bit, drawing baffling comparisons to Dynamite Kid and World of Sport (I mean, sure, they are masters of chain wrestling and innovative escapes, but the next time I see a Dynamite Kid or Rollerball Rocco match where they reverse a wristlock by doing a standing backflip will be the first), but instead of explaining their references, Stryker encourages you to stop watching Lucha Underground and watch some other stuff on YouTube. Puma and Mundo have an array of impressive kip ups and flips, and they put them to use early and often.

The crowd give Prince Puma a standing ovation for his athletic skills and start a “THIS IS AWESOME” chant, which is something that needs to be retired. Mundo’s parkour comes into play, first with a kick that’s, if anything, a glancing blow (a problem that has dogged Morrison since he began his ascent in WWE—his moves often look like they connect with a feather’s impact), then with the sequence above at the announce table, which is what marked him as a breakout star. The fans at the taping react to it all like they’re seeing a great main event, which they are. Vampiro calls this a Match of the Year Candidate, which is often said of matches that have no prayer of being considered for that honor, but Raw has matches this good maybe three or four times a year, and it’s rarer still when they feel like they’re building towards something more than a temporary talking point. It’s the kind of stuff instant replay was made to showcase, but Lucha Underground has no time for the past and keeps things moving forward as quickly as possible. Knowing that it’s been three years since the average wrestling fan last saw Mundo, they do a good job teasing his spectacular finishing manuver, The End of the World (formerly known as the Starship Pain). Puma counters with a roll up, by rolling out way and hitting him with a springboard double knee, but takes too long setting up for a springboard 450 splash and succumbs to Mundo’s third attempt. Rating: B+

The crowd and announcers give Johnny Mundo and Prince Puma a standing ovation as they celebrate with each other in the spirit of sportsmanship. Dario Cueto comes out with his briefcase and congratulates Mundo, but he plays keepaway long enough to allow a pair of unnamed gangster types and former WWE wrestler Ezekiel Jackson (“I know that face,” Stryker says, inadvertently cheapening the moment) to hit the ring and beat down our heroes. Jackson hits Mundo with a chokeslam, and the first episode ends with Cueto declaring that neither Mundo nor Prince Puma will be receiving $100,000, as he’s paid these three men with that money, instead. Seeing as he’s paid three wrestlers instead of one, I guess you have to laud the guy for creative financing, even if what he’s bought is a half-ass New World Order. All of that segues easily enough into…

Episode 2

…where Cueto’s gangsters introduce themselves as Big Ryck (Jackson), Cortez Castro (Rickey Reyes), and Cisco (‘Lil Cholo), which, along with Son of Havoc, are some of the worst gimmick names this side of Kassius Ohno. As a unit, they look and sound more generic than impressive, but I guess with a show like this you take what you’re given. They’re here to beat people up and take their money and, in Cisco’s case, probably look real sad when people start humming “The Thong Song” at his expense. Jackson puts a lot of emphasis on his new Big Ryck moniker to stop people from chanting his WWE-owned one before they start (which wasn’t going to be an issue, dude), but before he can bring out a chalkboard and write out a pronunciation key for it, Johnny Mundo hits the ring and starts beating up on his buddies. Big Ryck leaves the ring like the boss that he is (and, really, I love GIGANTIC DUDES who play the role of coward heel), leaving Castro and Cisco (The C+C Wrestling Factory) to face Mundo’s well-chiseled wrath. It’s a decent enough wrestling brawl, but again, the camera work is suspect. I think the point of the overhead camera is to show the wrestlers running across the ring, with the entire ring in the plane of vision. The problem with that theory is that it only takes three steps to cross the ring from rope to rope, four from turnbuckle to turnbuckle, and a dude like Mundo can do it pretty quickly. Moves do not look good from the overhead cam, and there is little precedence in wrestling for a hard cut from an overhead perspective to one in the ring. Lucha Underground might be attempting to retrain the eye of its viewers, but I’ve been watching wrestling for most of my life, and that is unlikely to happen. The C+C Wrestling Factory escape from the ring and grab some hilariously old-school wooden chairs, which prompts the arrival of Prince Puma. Dario Cuteo asks for an official and declares that Puma and Mundo will take on Cortez and Cisco right now, and Big Ryck smokes a cigar indoors because he’s a goddamn deviant.

Johnny Mundo and Prince Puma vs. Cortez Castro and Cisco: Lucha Underground‘s first tag team match keeps the story from last week going, pitting two white meat babyfaces against mean gangsters. The match gets off to a fast start, as Puma hits a few variations of the hurricanrana on both members of C+C. Puma and Mundo work together as a team, scoring with a double enziguri before Mundo takes over. It’s early, but Vampiro continues to talk about Konnan as a corrupting influence upon Prince Puma, which is interesting. Stryker says that Cisco told him that he wrestled “prison shower style, holmes,” which a) did not happen and b) is the kind of stupid bullshit I’m used to Matt Stryker saying into a live microphone. Cisco, believe it or not, does not wrestle like he’s trying to rape somebody, but he’s a pretty solid hand. Cortez Castro and Cisco get some decent looking stuff in, but this match is all about Mundo and Puma, their coup and their future respectively. Prince Puma is an absolute joy to watch, and Mundo definitely seems to have found some of the focus that eluded him in WWE. Sadly, the camera is out of position to catch a crazy bump by Mundo to the outside, but it’s thankfully there to see Puma do a handspring moonsault over the ropes and to the floor. The heels don’t stand a prayer and are finished off from there by stereo 450 splashes in short order. Rating: B

The SoCal hipsters in attendance cheer on their favorites while Big Ryck glowers and stalks away. In the back, Konnan says that he was right about Prince Puma, but that he needs to stay away from Johnny Mundo. He’s a sage adviser, like Mick from Rocky if Mick was once a member of nWo Wolfpac. The backstage angles in Lucha Underground are actually pretty entertaining because they’re coupled with serious, soap operatic music, and the wrestlers are all doing their best to act like they’re trapped in a telenovela, which I suppose they are. Puma and Konnan leave the artfully gritty locker room, and Stryker and Vampiro introduce a video for Mil Muertes, the 1,000 deaths Dario Cueto threatened to unleash upon the world in episode one. Mil Muertes, of course, sounds much cooler than 1,000 deaths, and beneath that mask (sorry to ruin any illusion that Muertes is some old rival of Mil Masceras’) is Rickey Banderas, perhaps better known as Judas Mesias. I’m vaguely familiar with him from Wrestling Society X and his brief time in TNA, but not enough to comment on anything beyond what Lucha Underground gives us, which is quite fantastic. He is seconded by former WWE Diva Maxine, now going by the name Catrina, who talks about how Mil Muertes is is actually worse than 1,000 deaths. Mil Muertes appears and, with the aid of post-production, roars like a lion, and we’ve got our main event attraction.

Son of Havoc and Ivelisse vs. Chavo Guerrero Jr. and Sexy Star: Picking up from where last week’s slight storyline debacle took off, Son of Havoc returns to the ring flanked by former WWE Tough Enough contestant Ivelisse Vélez, who is among the most positively buzzed about women on the independents today. It’s too bad that they put Cross under a mask, because in Absolute Intense Wrestling this year he started displaying the kind of charisma he was often accused of not having. Chavo Guerrero Jr. and Sexy Star get star entrances and reactions while Matt Stryker plugs Chris Jericho’s Talk Is Jericho podcast and talks about how different things are, as this mixed tag team match won’t adhere to the usual man vs. man, woman vs. woman rules. As one of the people behind Wrestling Fashion, let me just say that I love Sexy Star’s entrance cape. Son of Havoc gets to show off more than he did during the first episode of Lucha Underground and is dragged around the ring by his beard by Guerrero. Immediately, Ivelisse gets involved by kicking Guerrero in the back, and she gets into the ring and puts the boots to Guerrero. The intergender stuff, which I am a huge proponent of, would come across so much better if the announcers (all announcers, not just Vampiro and Stryker) stopped putting so much emphasis on how disadvantaged women are in the ring against men. When a small dude is in the ring with a huge man, they talk about size differences. Here, two women are in the ring with two men of roughly equal size, and the women are proving to the world that they can hang with men or whatever. I just want to watch Ivelisse kick the shit out of a third generation Guerrero. Don’t stick me with your gender hang-ups, okay? Chavo tags in to Sexy Star, who comes into the ring with retribution on her mind. Son of Havoc drills her with an elbow, though, which causes Chavo to wince in his corner. Matt Stryker, who once went on a rant about how unfortunately liberal America had become on an episode of ECW on SyFy, says that in 2014, women are on the same exact level as men, “some would say above men in many professions,” and between his tenuous understanding of gender politics and his belief in the humor of prison rape jokes, he can pretty much go fuck himself. Star and Ivelisse go at each other with punches and kicks, managing, quite easily, to put together one of the more enjoyable sequences two women wrestlers have had on free television in 2014. Son of Havoc continues playing the chauvinist dirtbag rubbing his heel into Star’s face. Naturally, being a scumbag costs him, as Sexy Star gets her knees up when Son of Havoc goes for a standing moonsault. She tags Chavo Guerrero Jr. in, Guerrero takes him out with a Jushin Liger capo kick, and everything breaks down. The woman fight to the outside, Chavo takes Son of Havoc out with a frog splash, and Sexy Star tags in to take the win with a roll-up. The chivalry aspect of the finish isn’t nearly as satisfying as Star straight up defeating Havoc would have been, but this match does a better job all around of showcasing her skills, Havoc’s, and introducing us to the idea of a Lucha Underground women’s division that won’t suffer the same stagnation their peers on WWE television are often subject to. Rating: B

Blue Demon Jr. is shown preparing for his match with Mil Muertes when the aforementioned Catrina shows up to distract him. I don’t have many memories of Maxine’s matches in WWE, as NXT was a never-ending procession of awkward gimmicks and matches before it became a cult phenomena, but I do remember that she and Derrick Bateman were a pretty effective unit, or at least a memorable one, as the two frequently engaged in Pro-Wrestling Make Out Sessions every time they were on camera. Her gimmick here, it seems, is to plant wrestlers with the Kiss of Death. Straight wrestling fans probably swooned all over the place when they heard this. She says that Mil Muertes has sent her with a message and licks Blue Demon Jr., which, I dunno. When one man’s message to another man is delivered via tongue, that message comes with some strong homosexual undertones. I don’t care whose tongue he’s sexting with. Then Konnan appears to talk more about the horrible barrio he found Prince Puma in. It’s good, but Konnan doesn’t lick anybody.

Blue Demon Jr. vs. Mil Muertes: Blue Demon Jr. gets an early-90s jobber entrance, and we get our first real look at Mil Muertes. He and Catrina look fantastic together, a pair of pulpy villains looking to stick their knives straight into the heart of a stalwart technico. Stryker, one of the worst human beings in the world when it comes to talking about women, says that Catrina exudes “some type of dark seduction.” Honestly, I prefer Vampiro just saying that he finds women hot. It’s more flattering than Stryker trying to be the most eligible brony on OKCupid. Muertes and Catrina have a mysterious, maroon handkerchief that they pass back and forth to each other, and this, too, is fantastic, because Lucha Underground is doing in a few minutes what the WWE often struggles to accomplish given months and a much higher budget, which is to imbue their new characters with as much purpose and personality as the ones we’re already familiar with. Muertes kisses Catrina and immediately goes on the attack, taking Blue Demon Jr. down and dominating from there. Vampiro mentions that Mil Muertes looks like something Blue Demon Jr.’s father and uncles would have seen in the science fiction films they once starred in, and he’s not wrong. It’s a great detail to pull out, and Vampiro, it seems, is a natural to calling a show like this, with one eye on the history of the genre and the other on the target demographic. The match is two stocky dudes gone a’clubbering all over each other, old school and enjoyable. Catrina, too, fits the old school aesthetic, distracting Blue Demon Jr. and attacking him when the referee’s back is turned. Demon’s slaps really pop off of Muertes’ massive chest, and Muertes’ spear look more like a football tackle than most iterations of that move. Mil Muertes hits Blue Demon Jr. with a flatliner, which makes sense but is a terrible finishing maneuver in 2014, and gets the win. Rating: B

After the match, Mil Muertes continues pressing the advantage until Chavo Guerrero Jr. hits the ring with a chair. Muertes exits the ring and Demon gets up… and Chavo hits him right between the eyes with the chair! Guerrero takes out the referees as the crowd chants “WHY CHAVO WHY,” and every luchadore who comes down to the ring to stop him gets brained as well. Sexy Star rushes to the ring to calm her tag team partner down, but Chavo takes her out, too!

The show ends with Chavo in full-blown Guerrero bastard mode, and it is a welcome sight. If, next week, Chavo goes up to the top rope for the frog splash before leaping down and refusing to pay tribute to his uncle Eddie, I will lose my mind. Chavo prevents the EMTs from taking Blue Demon Jr. out on a stretcher, taunts the crowd, and the fans in the sweatbox warehouse give Guerrero hell because he deserves it. In two episodes, Lucha Underground has established a fairly compelling new world and introduced a limited number of familiar faces into it. It’s established two new characters, Prince Puma and Mil Muertes, as forces to be reckoned with within that world. With a few hiccups, it’s managed to credibly integrate women wrestlers with the men, and it featured one of the better heel turns of the year. I’m not yet won over by the idea of yet another evil authority figure, and I think it’ll be a good five years or so before a faction comes along that doesn’t remind me, for good or for ill, of the nWo, but this is a solid foundation for a new brand, the cliffhangers from episode one were paid off well in episode two, and the final, melodramatic shot of the chair dented over Blue Demon Jr. and Sexy Star’s head has me wanting to tune in to see what happens next. As a wrestling fan, that’s all I can ask for.

Rating:
November 9, 2014
Video Game Review: ESPN NFL 2k5 (2004)

This year, more than any year I can remember, it feels horrible to watch the National Football League. But football is a hard habit to break; I’ve loved it all my life, and one day I decided that I needed a fix, so I dusted off my Playstation 2 and popped in my copy of ESPN NFL 2k5, the last NFL game, I always say, that the world ever needed. There has, of course, been the usual procession of Maddens in the ten years that followed the publication of this game, some that added features that really make Visual Concepts’ gridiron classic feel every bit as old as it is. But this game, which once retailed at $20 and was a staple of every PS2 owner I knew’s library, is still the deepest, most satisfying football video game I’ve ever played, even if most of its roster has long since retired.

Immediately, I launch Franchise Mode and elect to play as my beloved, long suffering Detroit Lions. Even though they’re led by Joey Harrington, whose weapons are two consecutive wasted draft picks at the wide receiver position, there’s some comfort in this, knowing the Lions’ inadequacies and where I can improve. Before I can do that, I have to play the games. Before I can play the games, I have to navigate what Franchise Mode wants from me as the coach of the Detroit Lions. ESPN NFL 2k5 is rich in terms of how it simulates the day-to-day minutiae of an NFL team, as every day before Sunday is divvied up into time you can spend drilling your team. You can send your quarterback to the film room to study tape of the opposing team’s secondary, assign your defensive linemen to the weight room so they have more push off the snap, and have your coach give the team a motivational pep talk. I told virtual Steve Mariucci to give my Lions—a team I remember as a gaggle of punchless losers—an aggressive speech before sending the players home, like Patton or Mike Ditka or a mother who is tired of her underachieving son’s bullshit. The Lions responded in fine fashion to the day’s events, each individual player losing overall percentage points. When Robert Porcher lined up on Sunday and tackled the opposing running back, he was so weakened by Mariucci’s barbs that he broke a vertebrae, sending my once okay defense into a tailspin. Same old Lions, baby.

On the field, it’s tough to measure ESPN NFL 2k5 against modern football games, because the controls for the genre have remained the same, across every football game of merit, since gaming grew out of the 16-bit era. Though this one offers a First Person Football mode with some nice detailed touches (you watch the field through a facemask and can see the player’s name Sharpied into the helmet, for example), it’s a disorienting way to play a genre that reached perfection the first time it was presented from the top down, camera centered on the quarterback with his receiving options mapped to each individual button. In fact, playing the game in 2014, I couldn’t help but wonder if the perception of football as a quarterback’s sport wasn’t somehow implanted through the yearly procession of video games that cast the player in that role. It wasn’t all that long ago that NFL teams were considered unbalanced without a premier running back, and the teams in this game are stocked with them. But you are not the running back until you tell the quarterback to snap the ball, you are not the running back until the quarterback hands the ball off to you and scampers away to safety. It’s obvious now, watching football, that a team without a quarterback is going nowhere. I don’t think I learned that until this game, until it made me see that it’s the quarterback that touches the ball on every single offensive snap, and that its his vision or lack thereof that determines the outcome of the game. Every significant development in the Madden franchise after they locked up exclusive rights to the NFL license reflects this, that the fun you have playing the game is the fun you have playing as the quarterback. Until Madden started picking up on things like vision, slight audibles at the line of scrimmage, no-huddle offenses, wildcat formations and mobile quarterbacks, ESPN NFL 2k5 was the only football game that seemed to really understand the quarterback’s role and how it was evolving as generals like Peyton Manning and scramblers like Michael Vick were redefining the league.

Before rediscovering this one, the last football game I had played was Madden NFL 25. It’d been years since I’d thought of playing a football game, so the upgrades in terms of graphics and presentation were astonishing to me, even if those updates were largely noticeable to me as in-game advertisements for garbage I didn’t want. Madden NFL 25 (and, I presume, this year’s outing), is a football game for today’s FOOTBALL ALL THE TIME fan, but I found it flat and underwhelming, and, without the presence of its namesake on commentary, without a soul. When I go to football for entertainment, it is not so that I might be as overwhelmed by football as I am by all the other stuff taking time in my life. To that effect, ESPN NFL 2k5 is a game for the casual fan that anticipates the nation’s coming unending obsession with the sport. As fun as the game still is to play (believe me, there are few feelings more satisfying in a sports game than sacking Brett Favre and knocking him out for a quarter or two), there’s a lot of fluff that might have seemed impressive in 2004, like playing a game against A.I. designed to play like David Arquette or Carmen Electra or using your in-game achievement points to trick out your virtual crib, but what urges do these options now satisfy? Hell, when I loaded my VIP Profile from the memory card, my crib circa 2004 was an empty shell then, David Arquette’s calls to it left unanswered. I play football games to play football. The rest of the bells and whistles are unnecessary.

The one extra that seems indispensable now is how Visual Concepts utilized the ESPN brand to make their sports games feel like something you’d lay on your couch and watch all day on a lazy afternoon. The charm of ESPN NFL Countdown wears off a season into Franchise Mode, when a dead-eyed Chris Berman is once again talking about Oktoberfest and schnitzel on the grill, but the game’s dedication to the gimmick is as detailed as the Playstation 2 allowed, and unparalleled by any other sports game outside of the ESPN 2k franchise. SportsCenter features highlights from games, the NFL Draft has opinions from ESPN draft expert Mel Kiper, Jr., and the game’s camera, in replays and cutscenes, operates with the same sweeping gestures that 24/7 coverage requires to remain interesting. It’s easy to wonder what this series would be like now, on Playstation 4 and Xbox One, had EA Sports not heard the footsteps of a fully-featured $20 sports game and locked up exclusive rights to the NFL. Would your week be interrupted by Around the Horn and Pardon the Interruption questioning your decision to go for it on 4th and goal with the game on the line? Would a virtual Grantland post articles hailing your design schemes against the aerial onslaught of Peyton Manning as singularly genius? No longer as obsessed with sports as I once was, would I find these things an annoying hinderance to the game itself, as I do now? It’s the end of the third quarter at Ford Field in Detroit, and the cheerleaders are dancing while my system loads the data necessary to begin the next five minutes of play. I’m trying to skip this, but the game won’t let me. Even in the idyls of youth, nothing is perfect.

Rating:

ESPN NFL 2k5. Developed by Virtual Concepts and published by 2K Sports and Sega. Reviewed on Playstation 2.

If you have a Playstation 2 or an Xbox, ESPN NFL 2k5 is still a game that’s worth owning. You should be able to find it pretty easily at used stores that sell games for those systems, or at Amazon for the PS2 or the Xbox. Don’t buy them new, though. That would be foolish.

November 8, 2014
Free Wrestling: Johnny Gargano vs. Chris Sabin (AIW: 5/24/14)

Here’s how it works: you get into a car accident the first day you move to a new city and don’t drive again for nearly a year. When you do, it’s not because you want to, but because you’ve booked yourself on a solo three-day roadtrip across the United States of America to see some professional wrestling. You fly from Atlanta to Detroit. You are given a Nissan Sentra at the Hertz counter though you are promised a Ford Focus. You get behind the wheel, turn the ignition, put the car in drive, place your foot on the pedal, and drive all the way to Cleveland, Ohio, which was a second home for you once, because once, you were part of a wrestling promotion there that was starting to build a reputation for itself before you moved. That wrestling promotion is Absolute Intense Wrestling. Before you can go to Easton, Pennsylvania to watch the rebirth of CHIKARA, you’ve got a double-shot of AIW, The J.T. Lightning Invitational Tournament. It’s AIW’s wildest night of the year, a two-day party thrown by 24 of the best wrestlers in the world, but you’re tired and you’re catching up with friends and everything is a blur, and holy shit you need to be awake early tomorrow to make it out to Easton. So Johnny Gargano and Chris Sabin are in the ring having their match and it just kinda passes you by. Jesus, how does that happen?

This match is Chris Sabin’s AIW debut, and Johnny Gargano is AIW’s ace wrestler. Whenever there’s a big debut, it seems Gargano is the hand-picked opponent, and it is hard to question the logic of that choice. Gargano, as Pedro DeLuca’s introduction lets you know, is a son of Cleveland. He was born there, trained there, and lives and wrestles there still. He’s one of the top names in Dragon Gate USA, he wrestles in Pro Wrestling Guerrilla, and he was a major part of CHIKARA’s roster until their relaunch, but in AIW he is unfettered by DGUSA’s storyline expectations or where he’s placed on PWG’s show. In AIW he is the attraction, and any match against him is the main event. When Gargano stops to flash a money sign to the crowd after driving his knees into Sabin’s gut, it’s not because he’s a prick, but because he is Cleveland, Johnny Wrestling to the Brown’s Johnny Football, and nobody standing across the ring from him will leave an encounter forgetting it.

This match has a definite “showcase” feel to it. Gargano had wrestled in PWG the night before and was recovering from a dislocated jaw. There was still novelty in seeing Sabin on a show that wasn’t promoted by TNA Wrestling. Wedged in-between rounds of the JLIT tournament, there were no storyline implications and nothing on the line between the two but pride, as they say, so the feeling-out process between the two is prolonged and the action, while heated, never threatens to overwhelm the rest of the show. What ends up happening is that this encounter becomes an example where good, competent announcing elevates the entire match. Matt Wadsworth and Leonard F. Chikarason are both storytellers, and halfway through the match Wadsworth’s point about Gargano’s dislocated jaw making it harder to breathe through his mouth as the match goes on segues into Chikarason saying that Sabin knows about Gargano’s injury because the two follow each other on social media. And then Sabin dropkicks Gargano in the jaw and follows with a European uppercut, and it all syncs so well with what’s being said at the commentary table that you remember the impact that wrestling moves must have on the anatomy.

Maybe it’s because of Gargano’s jaw, but the match never quite makes it out of first gear. Granted, when you’re talking about Johnny Gargano and Chris Sabin, first gear is going to get you pretty far. The two do a good job of working around Gargano’s big spots—the corner lawn dart, the grounded kicks, and the Garga-No Escape—but late in the second night of a two day wrestling orgy, it’s pretty clear that the audience at Turners Hall is saving themselves for the conclusion of the tournament. The attention they pay to the wrestlers in the ring is polite, but reserved, and beyond a suicide dive that nearly sees Gargano fly into the first row and his two transitions into the Garga-No Escape (which has grown into a beautifully applied submission maneuver), there’s not really much for them to get out of their seats for. This is two of the best on the independents firmly in cruise control; good but not great. Gargano continues building his name, and Sabin continues reestablishing his reputation on the independents. It’s a good debut, and Sabin would later return to AIW to face Kevin Steen in the opening match of Absolution IX (which, wow—the opening match?), but both men are capable of more. With the introductory phase now behind them, I’d be interested in seeing what they’d do in a rematch.

This match was provided for free courtesy of Absolute Intense Wrestling. Follow them on YouTube. Buy the J.T. Lightning Invitational Tournament from AIW, or from their partners at Smart Mark Video. Full disclosure: I used to work for AIW as an announcer and as a member of their social media team. Fear of a Ghost Planet is also the sponsor of this video.

November 7, 2014