Any WWE fans in the audience? (Part 1)

The Game Room
1562

*BAWANNNGAWAAANNNNHHHH

BAAAANNNNNHHH*

Drago and Aero Star face off for the 3rd in their best of 5 series. Another amazing match from these two. Aero pulls off an aerial stunt when Drago is out of the ring. He leaps over the top rope, perches on the second rope, jumps to the top rope, then springs off the top, does a backward somersault, and lands a plancha on Drago. It looks really high on camera, probably a 10-12 foot drop. Aero takes this fall. I’m guessing Drago will get the win next week so the series can keep going, then the winner will get one of High Priest Dario’s unique opportunities.

Dario Cueto is absent from the show again this week. When are we going to eavesdrop on his unholy machinations again?

Next, Big Ryck (Fury) goes 3-on-one against the Crew. They take him down and do their trademark swarm upon him, but since he’s the size of the three of them put together, he prevails and takes out Bael and Cortez. Mr. Cisco, the one who burned out Ryck’s eye earlier, decides to bail, but Sexy Star emerges and blocks his escape. She kicks him down the steps and throws him back into the ring. Ryck picks him up, smashes him into a chair, and wins the match. Then he beats his face bloody. But the bloodletting doesn’t stop there.

Final match: Casket match between Mil Muertes and Fenix - the Man of a Thousand Deaths vs the Man Who Cannot Die. I got two words for ya… HOLY SHIT!!! This is easily the match of the year for LU, and they’ve had some mindblowing matches. This one has very little in the way of typical lucha acrobatics. This one is just plain brutal and oftentimes scary.

Unlike WWE’s cartoony approach to casket matches, LU makes this a somber occasion. The casket is decorated with a grinning skull on top, and is wheeled to the ring by women in calaveras makeup (white faces, black eye sockets) and a man made up to symbolize Baron Samedi, leader of the Loa (think Papa Shongo without the campiness).

Muertes dominates most of the match, and at one point holds Fenix with one hand by his mask over the floor, and Fenix’s mask tears away enough to show his face, but that is soon obscured by The Crimson Mask. At one point, MM unscrewed the turnbuckle clip and hits Fenix in the face with it. It’s unbelievable how much punishment Fenix is taking, and he looks like a slasher movie victim through the course of the match. Yet he keeps coming back to kick MM in the gut and pull off an aerial stunt to bring down the big guy.

And, unlike WWE, there’s no struggles over the open casket where one guy tries to push the other in prematurely. That doesn’t happen till the very end, when MM is ready to finish off Fenix on the apron and Catrina opens the casket, but Fenix counters and leaves MM staggered. Fenix then jumps to the top corner and does a double-stomp drop on MM’s head, vaulting him into the casket. Catrina is about to close the lid, then reconsiders. She retrieves MM’s rock, the detritus left over from the cave-in that killed his family, licks it, and throws it in the casket and closes the lid. Baron Samedi and the calaveras then surround the casket and escort it through a cloud of mist to the Underworld.

LU is such a different experience than WWE, I don’t consider them competitors. It’s more like a show that has wrestling than a wrestling show. You kind of expect WWE theatrics to be rude, stupid, and campy, but LU takes you into another world entirely. You can have a spiritual journey if you’re not careful.

Haven’t watched NXT yet, so will review it later.

*BAWANNNGAWAAANNNNHHHH

BAAAANNNNNHHH*

1563

This is week two now that I’ve missed NXT…but thankfully I knew what happened :slight_smile:

1564

Holy shit.

How utterly insane was that casket match? How much of Fenix’s blood got splatted around the ring? Forget being the next WCW - at this rate, LU is on track to be this generation’s E-C-Dub. Honestly, the most shocking thing for me is that Fenix was actually willing to let Mil Muertes tear his mask open, though it did add some drama as he was trying to hide his face during the match. One wonders where Mil Muertes goes from here - to the extent that they’ve been paralleling the Undertaker’s career, I can only hope for the best.

We’ve been promised two big matches for next week’s show - Prince Puma defending the LU title against Cage, and El Patron defending the AAA title against El Texano Jr. (Interestingly enough, El Patron was also supposed to defend the AAA title against Cage at AAA’s big PPV this week, but the match had to be cancelled due to rain.) I think AEP retaining against Texano is a safe bet if only because it’d be a major breach of kayfabe for him to lose the belt on a taped show so far in advance of when he was supposed to defend it at a PPV, but Puma vs. Cage could go either way, and there’s no doubt that Konnan will play some part in the finish.

Rey Mysterio Jr. did in fact make his return to AAA last night, at the above-mentioned rescheduled Rey de Reyes PPV, where he and Myztetiz/Sin Cara I defeated the team of Pentagon Jr. and El Hijo del Perro Aguayo (who I don’t believe has appeared in an American promotion to date.) Rey is expected to make his LU debut on this Saturday’s taping, which we won’t see on TV until a few months from now.

1565

You realize you can still watch them on the network, right?

1566

WWE has a network?

How much is it?

1567

A couple of bucks a month. They’re not very clear on the exact amount.

1568

While we were theoretically in shot for some of the wide angles, I didn’t actually spot myself. It wasn’t much more than an outside possibility–as I said, we were in row G, right next to the stairs the wrestlers took down from the stage; it wasn’t a good place to wind up on TV. Best chance was if they followed someone out after a match, but no luck.

That said, still great seeing it and being a part of it. Hopefully they release the rest of it on a DVD at some point–nothin wrong w/ the matches they showed, but you missed Cesaro v. Neville, among other things.

1569

OLAY OLAYOLAYOLAYYYY OLAYYY OLAYYYY

The Columbus show looks like it took place in a bullpen. They had concrete platforms and steel fences, like a state fair penning in livestock. Maybe Enzo Amore felt at home.

Cool first match between Prince Pretty and Kallisto. Breeze always has that look of disgust whenever he has to touch his opponent, like ooh, I might get some of his uggo on me. At least Kallisto doesn’t have to play his hairdresser. Seems like it’s common for Breeze gets the uggo beat out of him for the latter part of the match, then do a DDP-type Beauty Shot out of nowhere for the win.

Big Cass, he’s full of sass, he’s kind of crass, he thinks he’s fast, but he’s only half fast, and gets rolled on his ass. Enzo’s shoes, ya heard the news? Pick and choose, mayhem ensues, but Cass still lose-es.

Vignettes of rasslers visiting hospitals are always interesting, in that we get to see them out of character. I couldn’t get over seeing Sasha Banks acting all nice and friendly and smiling.

Alexa Bliss is about a 7. SEVEN MULES TO PULL HER OFF MY FACE! Schwing! Cheap count-out win for the home girl, but I guess it sets up a future Sasha sashing. Slashing? Smashing. Snatching, shouldn’t go there…

Kevin Owens vs Alex Riley. As LawMonkey attested, KO gets huge face pops and stomps a mudhole in Alex “It’s time to rage” Riley. hahaha that just cracks me up. I do have to hand to hand it to Riley for selling the absolute HELL out of KO’s Lights-Out Power Bomb! That looked like a big SNAP of the fingers! BAWWWW!

OLAYYYY OLAYOLAYOLAYYYY OLAYYYY O O LAYYYY

1570

“Here comes Mr. Money in the bank with J and J security and these extra guards”

“J and J security are guarding the door to make sure Randall Orton doesn’t come in”
Um…if the guards are all sitting in the isle way then no one is guarding the doors. Besides you’re in the isle, why the hell do you think he would come down the isle when there are 5 guys there?

1571

Because that’s the way you sell how dominant he is, by having him effortlessly wade through all the security to get to the ring.

1572

I thought they’d have some kind of thing like Orton bought a front-row ticket, but they didn’t even bother with that. Dean Ambrose just used the back door.

1573

I actually brought that up to Ms. Cups as I was telling this to her, and we laughed over how funny that response was.

“I went out the other door. Yeah, he locked me in a room with two doors”.

1574

New topic: What do you think would make good entrance music, whether it be for a specific wrestler or just sounds cool in general? Maybe a pyro launch goes off after the intro, or other some special effect.

I always though the theme to Last Man Standing by Ry Cooder would make a dope intro, for somebody with a western/occult theme. I’m thinking the music would start at the 1:08 mark with the star emerging from billowing clouds of steam, with a spotlight directly behind him, showing his silhouette before he steps onto the stage.

1575

I was thinking about this awhile ago, what songs specific wrestlers could use if WWE weren’t so trademark-happy and insisted on writing almost everything in house these days.

These are the ones I came up with;

Daniel Bryan - Yes! Yes! Yes! (kinda cheating since the song is about him in the first place, but it’d be awesome anyway)

Dean Ambrose - Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap

AJ Lee - Black Widow (And I’m not the first one to have that idea either - that link is to a fan-made Titantron)

Bray Wyatt - Red Right Hand

1576

On a more serious note, Rey Mysterio Jr. apparently killed a man in the ring last night.

1577

Yeah, who would have thought it. Rey Mysterio Jr. Wrestling Murderer.

Nah, I’m kidding. That’s odd, the report I read was suggesting that he took the kick to the throat? Oh well, either way, bad way to go, and not Rey’s fault, but he’s got to feel terrible about it.

1578

I certainly didn’t mean to suggest it was - it was a tragic accident for certain.

1579

It must be pretty major to have something happen like this to something as esoteric as mexican wrestling…and have it be on espn’s homepage.

Although they did reference Mystereo in it (probably for name recognition).

1580

Articles I’ve read attributed cause of death to a whiplash effect from the ring ropes being bound too tightly.

That was how Mick Foley lost his ear. In a match with Vader in Germany, Mick was thrown through the ropes, but did one of his trademark moves where he wraps the ropes around his head and hangs in mid-air. The ropes were too tightly wound, so he would have strangled himself for real if he didn’t extricate himself from the situation, so as he pushed himself out, one of the ropes caught his ear under the lobe and gravity took care of the rest. He talks about the incident in his first book. He said the German doctors showed him his ear, told him it was too dead to sew back on, and chucked it in the trash.

1581

Still exactly zero fallout from the WWE doctor saying concussions are overblown.

When Triple H is on the board of Chris Nowinski’s Sports Legacy Institute.

And then we have another death in the ring.

Thinking it will be an interesting few weeks. The critics have got to be polishing up their new attack articles.