And now, here’s some more of MJF being the best anti-heel in the business.
As Tony Schiavone said on Dynamite, “That’s our scumbag.”
ok this is interesting according to the article that brian last and Jim C went over there’s more to the new nbc/universal deal than previously known the deal is for smackdown only apparently they dont want Raw or NXT which apparently means they’re up for grabs or going to the WWE section on peacock…
And now, please enjoy this memento of MJF’s time in NXT, when they used him as a canvas to test out how Finn Balor’s demon paint was supposed to look.
that looks cool as hell… they should of made a tag team…
Finn’s not using the demon paint any more. Is it trademarked? I could see MJF reviving it just to be a prick.
Here’s a brief match from 1982 with one of my favorite wrestlers, “The Unpredictable” Johnny Rodz. Despite his name he was entirely predictable, he was going to lose almost every match. He was also the greatest Carpenter in the industry, one of the guys who made the other wrestlers look good. He also put them in their place if needed. Wrestlers have talked about a match against Rodz where he beat the living crap out of them when they suddenly found themselves covering him with the ref counting to three. In the fight I linked he was already reaching the end of his active career, he looked much tighter in days past, but you can see in the highly technical start to this match he’s able to stay with Backlund who was in real life one of the best ring technicians in both amateur and pro wrestling. The success of the WWE now runs back to the WWWF and very specifically to the work of Rodz doing the job for so many wrestlers day in day out back then, and since then training many of the best in the game now.
I grew into wrestling watching (and being a big fan of) Bob Backlund, and of course watching Johnny Rodz constantly lose on TV. Rodz was the heel who would put up a fight against up-and-coming (or established) faces, after they had gone through the cannon fodder (Curt Hennig was among those serving the same purpose against the heels). I knew nothing of independent wrestling; I was single digit years old and Dad wasn’t a fan. I heard many years later Rodz was a staple in the northeast, not just the (W)WWF shows, and was well regarded. Taz was trained by Rodz, and I think the Dudleys/Team 3D (or maybe just one of them), but I’m can’t confirm the later. Thanks for sharing this bit of nostalgia.
So, here’s the full card for Wrestledream;
- ROH World Championship/STRONG Openweight Championship: Eddie Kingston (c) vs. Katsuyori Shibata
- Tag Team Championship: FTR (c) vs. Aussie Open
- TNT Championship, best of three falls: Christian (c) vs. Darby Allin
- TBS Championship: Kris Statlander (c) vs. Julia Hart
- ROH Tag Team Championship, handicap match: MJF (c) vs. The Righteous
- #1 contenders match: The Young Bucks vs. Lucha Brothers vs. the Gunns vs. Orange Cassidy & Hook
- Bryan Danielson vs. Zack Sabre Jr.
- Chris Jericho, Kenny Omega, & Kota Ibushi vs. Konosuke Takeshita, Sammy Guevara, & Will Ospreay
- Adam Page vs. Shane Strickland
- Ricky Starks vs. Wheeler Yuta
Should be a good show. I’ll be there live.
Enjoy the show. Adam Cole just can’t catch a break, can he? Another aborted run due to injury, and this might have an even longer down time. Keith Lee’s manager is looking better for the both of them by the day. OK, maybe not, but it is sad to see good talent like both of them constantly sidelined.
Edge’s WWE contract expires on Saturday, and rumor has it he may be making his AEW debut at Wrestledream. Luchasaurus is banned from ringside for Christian’s match, so his showing up to help his vampire brother would reek of awesomeness.
There’s also speculation that Copeland was the devil mask wearer who attacked Jay White at the end of Dynamite, but I can’t think of any storyline reason for that being the case. Edge and White never crossed paths before that I know of, so there’s no 20-years-ago heat like there was with Kingston and Castignoli.
Check out the cold open for NXT No Mercy.
you know that would be cool … a series of nxt based games
It’s been announced that Christian vs. Darby Allin will be main-eventing Wrestledream, which makes the odds of Edge showing up that much more likely. The last time a best-of-three match main-evented a PPV, it was the single greatest wrestling match I’ve ever seen (Okada/Omega at Dominion 2018). I don’t expect this match to be THAT good, but it oughta be a great one.
I just got into Seattle and Collision is in a few hours. I’ll report back about that show later.
Thoughts on Collision.
Is the show always this tag-team-centric? I’ll admit I haven’t caught it on TV, but on this main card we had six matches, four of which were tags, with an eight-man main event. It’s a testament to the strength of their tag team roster. Show was paced nicely - no talk show segments, no contract signings, no " championship celebrations", no hokey backstage segments where the wrestlers pretend the camera isn’t there - just wrestling.
As usual, the house went nuclear for Bryan - we were chanting “WE WANT BRYAN!” when we were waiting for him to get tagged in, and he played off it splendidly.
Tony Khan came out before TV started to warm up the crowd and bring out Shane Strickland for a birthday celebration. I yelled at him that he doesn’t suck and that’s the nicest thing I’ve ever said about a billionaire.
After the live show they taped an episode of ROH. More than half the crowd left before the ROH matches started. This was an improvement over last time when they just taped a bunch of squash matches for Dark, but it’s still anticlimactic - it’s like having Metallica open for Krokus, or having Cena curtain-jerk and putting Great Khali in the main event. Rocky Romero got a close victory over Christopher Daniels, and Athena retained the women’s championship over Leyla Hirsch, and an indy wrestler named Lady Frost lead two identical twins whose names I didn’t catch in an impressive defeat against the team of Willow Nightingale, Kiera Hogan, and Skye Blue. The other matches weren’t particularly impressive and they brought in quite a few DEFY wrestlers to job to the likes of Powerhouse Hobbs and Ethan Page. I like that Tony is keeping the brand alive and going, but it’s not what it once was.
They announced four matches for the Wrestledream preshow - Claudio Castagnoli vs. Josh Barnett, Luchasaurus vs. Nick Wayne, an eight-person mixed tag match, and the Acclaimed & Billy Gunn defending the trios titles against The Mighty Don’t Kneel.
Overall, fun show. Tomorrow should be even better. (PS: The carnitas nachos at Climate Pledge Arena are legit, but $16.25 is pricy even by sports arena standards.)
I wonder what they’ll call Edge? Most wrestlers from his era own their ring names, but he never went by that name until he signed with WWE. “Adam Copeland” isn’t really a name that sounds badass enough for a wrestler to go by, and age 50 is a little late to adopt a new gimmick. Maybe he can go back to the “Sexton Hardcastle” gimmick he had on the Canadian indies.
Grats to Ilja Dragunov, new NXT hvywt champ! He impressed me from the moment he started in NXT UK. He’s not fancy or pretty. He just keeps coming back from certain death like Freddie Krueger and wins by outlasting his opponents. Plus, his match with Carmello was the only one in No Mercy that didn’t feature a prime time callback. That said, I hope he never gets called up, at least not while VKM has some measure of creative influence. “He’s Russian? Let’s have him support Putin. That’ll get some heat!”
And guess who showed up at the end of WrestleDream?
The main event was insane. Darby got the first fall early on, then Christian got the second by countout after KOing Darby on the stairs. They started doing a stretcher job while Christian tore the ring mat off the ring exposing the plywood, then did a top rope dive onto the stretcher and brought Darby back in. A ref bump ensued and Christian went to hit Darby with the TNT title when Nick Wayne ran out, grabbed the belt from Christian… and whacked Darby himself! BETRAYAL!
Christian dragged the ref over and got the pin, then the two continued to beat down Darby. Sting ran out to make the save, but Luchasaurus attacked and laid him out and was about to hit him with a chair when…
“You think you know me?”
The R-Rated Superstar Formerly Known As Edge runs in and stares down his vampire brother. Christian hands him the chair, and he makes ready to take out Sting… but instead hits Wayne with the chair, spears Luchasaurus, and sends Christian running as he and Sting and Darby shake hands.
Most fun I’ve ever had at a live show. Bryan/ZSJ and Claudo/Barnett were both technical masterpieces, and there wasn’t a single bad match on the card. The only notable botch was during the tribute to Antonio Inoki on the pre-show, when Tony Khan accidentally knocked over the portrait of Inoki they had set on a table in the ring.
I hope AEW makes Wrestledream an annual event in Seattle - the crowd here is red-hot and they’ve got so many hometown heroes (there were five Puget Sound natives on this card between Bryan, Darby, Wayne, Barnett, and Swerve, plus Aubrey Edwards who also got started in DEFY) and the DEFY chants whenever one of the local vets was in the ring were massive. It was almost surreal seeing the crowd boo the hell out of Hangman Page (“FUCK YOU COWBOY!”) and cheering on Swerve and Prince Nana, and Bryan hugging it out with Aubrey after his match was great.10/10 show.
I won’t have to wait until next year to see them again, though, as they’re coming to Portland next month and I’ll be at that show as well.