Well, I still would not be shocked if Heath Slater’s continuing employment was part of JBL’s contract. Would even explain how he ends up on the same show!
I believe that it was a work, but Bryan sold the hell out of that.
Another solid episode of CWC. Loved Sabre/Gulak, and I was really surprised that Gargano got beaten.
Here are our matches for the quarterfinals;
- Akira Tozawa vs. Gran Metalik
- Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Noam Dar
- The Brian Kendrick vs. Kota Ibushi
- TJ Perkins vs. Rich Swann
We have three episodes left, so I’m guessing they’re going to do the quarterfinals over the next two, and then the semis and the final will be in the last episode.
Don’t know if I mentioned it before, but Ms. Cups and I are going to the CWC taping on Friday. I’m assuming we’ll see all 4 of these matches because I can’t imagine them stretching the entire time we’re there to just 2 matches.
Since this is a different animal than a regular Full Sail taping, I’m interested to see how it differs…
Lucky bastard.
Swann & Lince made me mark like a 5-year old. Can they just open every WWE show from now on?
I decided to give TNA a try after STC popped for it and watched Impact last night.
It was definitely entertaining. The wrestling wasn’t as good as it used to be, but they did OK in the promo department. They didn’t copy WWE, or devote the entire show to somebody like Dixie Carter or Hulk Hogan. Billy Corrigan only appeared in one segment. Otherwise, it was all wrestlers.
The three Ms came over from RoH – Mike Bennett, Maria Canellis and Moose. Bennett traded his 80’s hair band look for Donal Lothbrok facial hair and added “The Miracle” to his name. The show opened up with a battle royal to determine the #1 Contender, and Bennett won by shoving his partner Moose over the top rope as he was trying to throw somebody else out. That led to Bobby Lashley approaching Moose later and talking him into having dinner and discussing a partnership. “You’re picking up the tab.” That was more storyline for Moose than they ever had for him in RoH.
Matt Hardy is now some kind of pretentious goth motivational speaker. He’s got his hair all teased out with a peroxide streak. I gather he got that way from a blow to the head that altered his personality, like when Batman got amnesia whenever the Joker sapped him. Anyway, he’s trying to keep brother Jeff from doing his high-flying stuff and fight with honor instead. Whuuut? He kept picking up the mike during Jeff’s match with Abyss and doing that Little Lord Fauntleroy schpiel, or whatever it is he’s trying to do. Jeff, in the meantime, caked his mouth with black, I guess to signify the dark conflict he’s having with his soul or something. He must have got too much makeup in his eyes, because he missed a dive on Crazzy (he’s so crazy he’s got 2 Z’s) Steve by a mile, but Steve sold it like crazzy anyway.
Abyss, who’s copied Kane, Mankind, Hulk Hogan and Penn Jillette throughout his career, is now copying Bray Wyatt, but with green smear on his face. He really phoned in this match. It’s like he does everything by rote and falls down before the other guy gets off his move, just to save time. Matt in the meantime, picks up the mike again, points to Crazzy and says “I understand the prophecy now! It’s you!” and goes to put his tongue down Crazzy’s ear canal. Ooooooo kay, I think you’re trying too hard to be weird, Matt. Abyss and Steve had some juggalo chick named Rosemary as their valet, and the three of them sprayed more mist in one night than Great Muta has done in one year.
Side note: you might appreciate this Smapti. I went to Mick Foley’s show at Charlie Goodnight’s a couple of years ago. He had Matt Hardy and Shane Helms come out with him after his stand-up to tell road stories and answer audience questions. One guy in the audience asked Matt if he was aware that Sunny has now been arrested for stalking more times than he has. Matt walked off the stage.
They had a Knockouts match where 5 women competed for the KO title. At first, I thought Sienna was Ivelisse from LU with different hairstyle and ring attire, but I guess she wasn’t. This chick named Allie was supposed to be her assistant and help her win. She had this really squeaky voice and kept cracking me up. She would occasionally help Sienna with a half-hearted push and squeak “Oooh did you see that Sienna? Did I do good? Was that good Sienna?” Whenever one of the other KOs would attack her, she would squeal and beg for mercy. I was in pain from laughing. She wound up winning the match by accident and was awarded the title.
Later, there were some X Division guys having a debate about who was going to win the title, and STC’s favorite Eli Drake was doing 90% of the talking. He had a stand and would push the Dummy button occasionally during his ranting. They rigged up some kind of South Park style animation of his head popping up from the bottom of the screen and shouting “Dummy” every time he pressed it. The segment ended in a brawl of the high flyers.
During the course of the show, they had vignettes of EC III and Drew Galloway holding a summit at a penthouse by poolside. The former Drew McEntyre did a decent job of playing the Game of Thrones type of civilized viper who will share a drink with you but still stab you in the back. The two later had a match to determine number #1 contender (what, wasn’t that what the battle royal was for?) with Aron Rex playing referee. The former Damian Sandow has really changed his look. His beard is 90% gone, and he doesn’t talk nearly as much or act goofy. He just kind of glowers most of the time. A far cry from the guy who easily had the most heel heat from a house show I saw a few years ago. EC wound up winning the match, and Drew took out his frustrations on Rex, setting them up for a feud.
So, not bad, and definitely better than when Dixie Carter was in charge. I would like to see how their X Division does nowadays. It used to be really cool until WWE has-beens like Kevin Nash completely fucked it over.
Just wait until all the X division people do their weird ladder-match-X-match thing!
Geez, Tino Sabatelli makes a brief appearance and loss in the NXT tapings? How long they going to give this guy?
Gotta say I was pleasantly surprised just now to open up Fivethirtyeight to see what the latest odds on the presidential race were… and see Shinsuke Nakamura’s photo in the marquee, accompanyinga statistical analysis of how well Japanese wrestlers have done in WWE.
Good article. I particularly liked this bit about Shinsuke Nakamura:
“Nakamura, whose character is equal parts Michael Jackson, Freddie Mercury, Bruce Lee, and a wrecking ball to the face…”
Well, looks like Cody Rhodes reversed an Angle Slam into Cross Rhodes to beat Kurt Angle. 
Good to see Kurt put over Cody, even if every mention of Kurt wrestling these days makes me cringe.
He was one of my favorite heel managers. He was like the sinister version of Mr. Miyagi.
He was at his best when he managed Don Muraco, and the two of them would spoof Charlie Chan and Miami Vice. I remember a thing he did with Muraco where they formed a stand-up comedy act, with Muraco totally ruining jokes and Fuji being too late for the setups because he had to do the evil laugh first.
Muraco: My aunt Matilda was so fat, when she sat around the house she really sat around the house.
Fuji: ha ha ha ha… how fat was she?
It was the unfunniest parody of anything ever, but it was genius how unfunny they made it.
Bobby Heenan said Fuji would paint cat whiskers and noses on anybody who fell asleep on the plane. He definitely had a weird sense of humor.
I actually got to see Mr. Fuji wrestle live once. It was a house show in San Diego somewhere around 1990-1991, when I was around 8 or 9 years old. I believe it was him and the Orient Express in a 3-on-2 tag match against either Demolition, or Dusty and Dustin Rhodes. (It was a long time ago; forgive me for my memory being hazy.)
He was definitely one of the great heel managers of all time, and one we won’t see the like of again.
You know, I’ve tried to do write-ups for the CWC taping THREE SEPARATE TIMES, and something always happened that screwed it up.
So screw it.
Imma wait til Wednesday and comment retroactively.
Great manager, pretty formulaic as a wrestler. I saw him an Tanaka defend the tag team titles a couple of times against teams formed with Tony Garea and some new kid that entered the old WWWF. It was hilarious too to see Vince still promoting WWII enemies as heels in the 70s. Fuji got with the gimmick as Vince started the Wrestlemania era. At least they had the story about the ceremonial salt used to cleanse the ring before the match that inevitably ended up thrown in someone’s eyes. Later wrestlers, and Hulk Hogan started throwing some kind of white powder at their opponents and the announcers would shout “Powder! He has powder!” as if it was supposed to mean something.
Yeah, all this makes me seriously cringe at how incredibly racist Vince and WWE have been in the past, which has not completely gone away.
My first exposure to Mr. Fuji was when he was a tag team with Masa Saito, feuding mostly with Tony Garea and Rick Martel. I was just starting to watch WWWF when he was teaming with Tanaka, and don’t really remember that. Of course, his Muraco vignettes were always hilarious, and Fuji was at his best as a heel manager during the Muraco/Steamboat feud.
82 years - he had a good run.
Kevin Steen just won a major championship in the main event on Raw. If I said that two years ago everyone would think I had gone mad.
Think about this–Johnny Moxley, A.J. Styles, Kevin Steen and Tyler Black are all in the championship picture in WWE. And two of them are on a show anchored by Bryan Danielson. Incredible.
For those doubting Owens as champ…he won in the most heelish way possible and still got a “You deserve this” chant. Dude. Is. Over.
Good. In my predictions for Summerslam I said I would prefer that they gave the belt to Owens. This should be entertaining.
And Steen is only champ because the previous champ got hurt - who was of course Prince Devitt.
Not sure where they’re going from here - just another Authority angle / McMahon family feud? Or are they turning Owens face?