When I saw the listing of topics for this season’s Dark Side of the Ring docuseries, the one that stood out the most was “The Brawl for All”, an unusual inclusion among heavier topics like Chris Benoit, Jimmy Snuka, and Dino Bravo.
What piqued my interest is that I really haven’t revisited the BFA since I became an MMA fan and writer in 2005 when I fell in love with the sport during the first season of The Ultimate Fighter. The WWE’s answer to a Toughman competition took place seven years earlier during the meat of the Monday Night War and while I remember watching it at the time, I have wanted to revisit the circumstances and fights themselves given everything I have seen since then.
Unfortunately, this episode was better suited for a Dark Side 20-minute series similar to what ESPN does for some 30-for-30 topics as there wasn’t enough meat on the bone to sustain their usual 44 minute runtime.
They did get several of the key behind-the-scenes and in-ring participants on camera like Vince Russo, Jim Cornette, Bart Gunn, Jim Ross, Darren Drozdov, and Charles Wright, aka The Godfather. While they do a good job of telling the backstory on the concept and execution, Russo and Cornette’s participation eventually breaks down into what we have seen on past episodes: Russo wanting to just get along and Cornette nearly having an aneurysm describing how much he hates him.
The fight fan in me wanted to hear from more of the other wrestlers turned temporary fighters, especially former UFC champion Dan Severn (who forfeited after one match), Ken Shamrock (who didn’t want to participate), Steve Blackman (what happened to him?), and even Bruce Pritchard who was talked about a lot but only heard in clips from his podcast.
But any discussion about BFA really breaks down into the what if scenarios regarding “Dr. Death” Steve Williams. Gunn, Cornette, and Ross talk about this in detail with Gunn describing how everyone assumed Williams would run through him which motivated him even more to knock him out.
And, of course, if the supposed goal of the tournament was to get Williams over to the point he could have a big run with Steve Austin in a wrestling match, the obvious question is this: why not just get him over with, well, wrestling matches in order to do that? That question is never answered and may not have been asked.
Spoiler alert, but Gunn knocks out everyone on his way to winning the tourney, including the Russo-hated John Bradshaw Layfield for which he said the tourney was created to embarrass. After he won the tourney, WWE supposedly had no idea what to do with Gunn, admitted by Cornette and Ross.
So, that leads to the other big question: how could WWE not figure out what to do with a good looking, well-built guy that just knocked out three men cold on national TV? That question is not directly answered, but we are basically told that it wasn’t their original plan. Ross says, “No one got over.” That feels like more of a decision than working with something that landed in your lap. Given where UFC is now, I have to think that mindset would be different in 2020.
The documentary then strangely diverges into a Cornette promo on Russo that doesn’t have much of anything to do with the BFA and then, a retelling of how Drozdov was paralyzed by D-Lo Brown, also nothing that has anything to do with the BFA. An idea for another short doc? 100%. Here, not so much.
If you’re looking for a basic explanation of the Brawl For All and why it was regarded as a terrible idea (even though Vince McMahon reportedly wanted to bring it back as an NXT competition), you’ll get what you need here. If you’re looking for more substance, you won’t find it here, a rare miss for the Dark Side series.
You can watch Dark Side of the Ring on Vice every Tuesday night as well as on demand.
You have to be a little crazy if you’re a professional wrestler.
Think about it. To want to dress up in tights, take loads of physical punishment in front of an audience who is ready to turn on you with a single botch, and to do it all for little to no money in the early years is 100% nuts. But, we love the people that do it anyway because, honestly, we’re a bit crazy too.
And then, there’s Jerome Young, aka New Jack, the subject of the second installment of Vice’s Dark Side of the Ring second season entitled “The Life and Crimes of New Jack”. He takes crazy to a completely different level and not necessarily a good one.
For those used to this series focusing on the more infamous stories in wrestling history (Bruiser Brody’s stabbing, Chris Benoit’s decline, the Montreal Screwjob), this is a bit of a diversion, focusing on someone who is singularly responsible for several infamous stories but is also still alive to tell his side of the story. Unlike other installments of the series, there isn’t any redemption story or anything close to a happy ending. Rather, like what appears to be in Young’s soul, there’s a big empty feeling when it’s all said and done.
Helping tell the story are Young, Jim Cornette, The Sandman, and D-Lo Brown, who was part of The Gangstas when they worked in Cornette’s Smoky Mountain Wrestling. The defunct Tennessee-based group was essentially our intro into the documentary with Cornette explaining what he was looking for in pairing Young with Mustafa Saed (Jamal Mustafa) in 1994: protagonists to rile up their primarily Southern white fanbase and boy, did he get it.
Unfortunately, Saed wasn’t part of the documentary. Based on the pencil shavings story in the doc, that would have been a trip.
‘New Jack’ takes the viewer through the SMW days and how the team had to deal with being called the n-word on a regular basis, firing back through firey and reality-driven promos and angles that reflected what was happening in the mid-90’s that only incensed the fanbase more. Without a doubt, Young was (and is) a gifted communicator, able to convey emotion easily, something we don’t get a lot of today.
The viewer eventually lands in Young’s ECW days and, primarily, the Mass Transit Incident, aka the time when Young got supposedly offended by something 17-year-old Erich Kulas (aka Mass Transit) said to him backstage and therefore took it out on him in the ring with a surgeon’s scalpel in a Revere, MA, tag match.
Unprofessional? Yes. Dangerous? Hell yes. One of the most well-known wrestling stories of the last twenty years? Yes, yes, and yes. Without it, I’m not typing 900 words about a New Jack documentary.
Unfortunately, we can’t hear from Kulas as he passed away in 2002 due to complications from gastric bypass surgery, nor his father who didn’t want to be involved. We also don’t hear from D-Von Dudley, who was part of the match, nor ECW head Paul Heyman. That leaves us with a little person wrestler named Tiny The Terrible who worked with Kulas and accompanied him that night to the arena, Sandman, and Young himself to tell the story.
“What I’m going to do to him, people will talk about for 10 years. 20 years later, they are still talking about it,” Young says, showing zero remorse even when discussing Kulas’ death or the subsequent trial in which he was found innocent because of something Kulas’ father had to admit on the stand.
That begins a rapid and dangerous decline into hardcore matches and more “The (Insert Wrestler Name Here) Incident” type affairs, partially (mainly?) fueled by increased drug use which Young freely admits to.
There’s The Vic Grimes Incidents, both of which would have set modern day Twitter ablaze if it was around then. In particular, an XPW rematch between the two features one of the nastiest bumps you will ever see, but miraculously, Grimes walked away with a dislocated ankle after being thrown off a scaffold seconds after being tased, somewhat hitting the ring ropes intead.
Young thinks the whole thing is funny and says simply wanted to even the score, but was actually trying to throw Grimes onto the ringside floor. It’s here when you start to really wonder why anyone would have booked him after this…but they did.
There’s The Gypsy Joe Incident (a 72-year-old wrestler Young beat up in front of around 50 fans because Joe no sold his offense) and the grand finale, The Hunter Red Incident. Young said he was incensed after Red blew him off as they were going through their match backstage. Then, after taking a few stiff shots in what essentially was an empty arena match, Young pulled out a blade and simply started stabbing Red in the back.
And, in the most wrestling way possible, he got out of it after being jailed, the story of which brings us to the end of the documentary. When asked about how a movie about his life would end, he laughs and says he would want to be seen sitting in a wheelchair snorting coke, throwing up middle fingers, saying, “Thank you, bitches!”
Like I said, wrestling is crazy.
You can watch ‘The Life and Crimes of New Jack’ on Vice TV on demand.
It’s been nearly 13 years since Chris Benoit and his family were found dead were in their Fayetteville, Georgia, home. While 13 years can be a lifetime to some, to the people close to the whole sordid situation, 13 years might as well be 13 minutes.
That’s why the creators Vice ‘Dark Side of the Ring’ documentary series had the equivalent of a live hand grenade in their hands with ‘Benoit’ to kick off their second season. Skew too positive and appear insensitive to the victims left behind. Skew too negative and you miss the opportunity to get into some of the overlooked aspects of the story.
To their credit, they stuck the landing on both aspects, building a story of how beloved the Canadian star was to friends and family, why that made this turn of events so shocking, and how the aforementioned friends and family — and even fans — have had to juggle their feelings given the tragic turn of events.
For those who watched all of season one and have heard interviews with the creators, it’s clear season two was the ideal time to tackle this story. Because of how well received that first round was, that undoubtedly bought them some cache with talents that might have otherwise not talked to them for a subject like this.
That cache enabled them to get nearly everyone you would want to hear from including Nancy Toffoloni’s sister, Chris’ surviving son David (his resemblance to Chris when you first see him is arresting), Chris Jericho, Chavo Guerrero Jr., Vicky Guerrero, Dean and Julie Malenko, Jim Ross, the detective who found the bodies, and others. The interviews combined with the family footage and images is tremendous and heartbreaking at the same time.
The bulk of the first hour focuses on who Benoit was and what drove him to become one of the best wrestlers in the world. Intertwined with that is the story of Nancy, aka Fallen Angel aka Woman. We learn how she gets into the business, how her work with Kevin Sullivan helped bring her to the forefront, and the complications that were to come with her, Sullivan, and Benoit.
Benoit beginning to work with Eddie Guerrero in Japan shapes the rest of the documentary and is portrayed as a trigger point for what began Benoit’s decline. All these years later, I didn’t realize just how tight their friendship was, first born out of Benoit’s initial dislike of Guerrero. Their families became friends and they eventually became inseparable. In painstaking detail, we taken through Guerrero’s sudden death, how it crushed Benoit, and examples of how he never truly recovered to the point of laying in the Guerreros’ bed and weeping.
The second half of the documentary focuses on the decline, the eventual double murder/suicide, and the aftermath which hits on two topics that I find fascinating.
The first was how WWE handled the blowback from mainstream media who were all over the story and then some. They go over the erasing of Benoit from their history, the infamous tribute show, the wellness policy loopholes, their claims steroids weren’t an issue, and how David and Nancy’s sister Sandra were essentially abandoned by the company after the tragedy.
The second was the complicated legacy of Benoit today including the aforementioned erasure. David talks about the struggles with growing up and still seeing his father as a hero despite what he did. His friends talk about remembering what a good and loyal friend Benoit but struggling with how to cope with what he did. Jericho, in particular, brings up how the wrestling business was nearly ruined by this story and how that would have crushed Benoit to know that given how much he loved the business.
Then, there’s the ending. If you haven’t seen it, I won’t spoil it but for those closely following the story, it’s truly a moment and a very good one at that.
For some, ‘Benoit’ will be a tough watch but it remains one of the Dark Side crew’s strongest works to date. While there are some complaints about certain people they didn’t talk to and some of the details that weren’t covered, it was a compelling and well put together effort considering the topic and is a great kickoff to their second season.
If you don’t have Vice TV, part 1 and part 2 are available for free on their YouTube channel. I’d also recommend checking out recent editions of Wrestling Observer Radio where Dave Meltzer and Bryan Alvarez answer questions in detail about the documentary and that time in their lives.
Last weekend’s wXw’s 16 Carat Gold 2020 was a very newsworthy edition with one former top talent (David Starr) reportedly having to leave the company at the urge of WWE while a WWE contracted performer (Alexander Wolfe) is on a temporary deal there through mid-April (or whenever wrestling picks back up again).
Those two stories somewhat overshadowed the actual tournament which had a lot of very good and one insanely great match. The winner was wXw newcomer and current PROGRESS world champion Cara Noir who impressed people with his performance as everything from his entrance to his facial expression and mannerisms up to certain spots in the match seem to be constructed with the high arts in mind.
He beat Mike Bailey in the main event in somewhat of a surprise match as many people had picked Dutch-born Jurn Simmons as one of the sure-fire finalists. The match of the weekend was had by Bailey and Bandido, who did some insane spots and had a match that will probably go down as one of the best, if not the best, in 16 Carat history.
The promotion was super lucky when it came to the COVID-19 virus as on Tuesday after the shows, the government of North Rhine-Westphalia (the state where 16 Carat took place) prohibited all events with more than 1000 people in attendance. Had they run this weekend, they would have had to cancel. COO Tassilo Jung said while they had some sort of backup plan, it would have been a gamble at best and could have meant a massive loss for the company.
The weekend followed the typical formula of establishing everyone on night one, having great and dramatic matches on night two and progressing storylines and saving raw emotion for night three
Here are the highlights of the weekend, followed by results to all the shows:
David Starr leaves wXw, indicates WWE is responsible
The 29-year-old came to wXw in early 2016 when he was a CZW regular through the relationship the two promotions had established that dates back to the early 2000s. He started in WXW (Afa’s promotion in Pennsylvania and no relation to wXw) and mostly wrestled for CZW, Beyond, and a couple of smaller indies in the Northeast. wXw took a chance at him and he quickly showed both his talent and promo skills, becoming a regular over the years as well as a major player in storylines.
He began a feud with WALTER which spanned multiple promotions and lasts to this day with the key being that he never beat WALTER (except for some tag matches where he still never was the one to beat him), held the wXw Shotgun title on three different occasions, and became part of the main event picture.
Being in wXw put him on the map to a number of other promotions in Europe, and he soon started wrestling for almost every major promotion in the UK, including PROGRESS, OTT, Revolution Pro, and Defiant back when there were fewer political issues on who you worked for. He also got noticed by PWG in the US, who started using him in January 2018.
Very outspoken and left-leaning on the political spectrum, Starr idolizes Bernie Sanders to the point he is being billed as “the Bernie Sanders of pro wrestling” among a ton of other nicknames. He moved to the UK in order to be eligible for public health care and is the founder of “We The Independent”, an organization striving to improve working conditions for wrestlers. He is a strong proponent of unionization and has been working with Equity in the UK, the trade union for those in the performing arts (similar to SAG in the US).
Starr is very outspoken about the way some major wrestling organizations conduct their business, publicly calling out both WWE and ROH owners Sinclair repeatedly and also got into a war of words with Gabe Sapolsky of EVOLVE about the payment of some of their talent. He last appeared for PROGRESS on December 30 of last year and hasn’t been mentioned there since which got some people talking.
At the end of January after the two clashed in an eight-man War Games-style single cage match, the match with wXw World Unified Wrestling champion Bobby Gunns was announced for night two of 16 Carat when it traditionally happens. Starr, seemingly out of nowhere, established a title vs. career stipulation. They did a good build up including some tremendous video packages and interviews by both guys and the match felt important, but the buzz seemed to be lower than for similar matches in the past.
The bout started slow but picked up pace and went 41:15 and saw both men give it their everything, kicking out of big moves. Starr messed up his back on a crazy dive where he virtually crashed into the first few rows of seats (hardback plastic chairs) at full speed, while Gunns also hurt his leg when Starr threw him off the entrance ramp as the two brawled around ringside, landing on a set of risers for standing room fans to get a better view of the action. After some fantastic back and forth action, Gunns retained the title with the “Ehrenmann Driver” (“man of honor driver”).
After his loss, Starr cut a very emotional promo and talked about how “freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom of consequences” and that he and wXw mutually agreed to part ways. He thanked everyone in the office and said that wXw put him on the map on a major level and that he wouldn’t be where he was if not for them. He talked about CEO Felix Kohlenberg taking a chance at him when he was “just a stupid kid at CZW, begging them to book him and had no idea what he was doing.”
He talked about creative director Dennis Birkendahl taking him to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp (Starr is Jewish and about 70,000 Jews were killed there during WW II) which he said changed his life forever. He thanked Christian Jakobi, the former CEO who left due to occupational burnout, and said that he helped him out a ton but would hate certain spots in matches which is why they included one today just to piss him off if he watched it. He said he also meant to thank WALTER “But, f*ck WALTER. Who did he ever beat?” He said he felt a certain disconnect with the locker room over the past 2-3 years, but that before this match, people came up to him, saying they loved him. He also said this was goodbye for real, not some intricate storyline or angle.
He tweeted last Monday that “I won’t go into further details regarding wXw on this platform and idk when/if I will in any public setting. Like I said, freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences and that this mutual decision was one that neither of us wanted to make. I love wXw & always will.” He was very emotional at the merch table as well, hugging fans and saying goodbye to everyone personally who took the time to walk up to him. Starr himself confirmed to me that this was very much a WWE call.
wXw also thanked him and that they would miss him while COO Tassilo Jung took to Twitter and wrote “It has been an unbelievable ride and I’m gutted it had to end.”
At a Sunday media panel, Jung said there would be some limit on how deep they would dive into the topic of Starr and any possible WWE involvement. He said they sat down with Starr beforehand and told him that after the match, the mic was his to say whatever he wanted to say, basically giving him the chance to keep things within the realms of storyline or let the person behind David Starr speak, and Starr chose the latter. He said they appreciated what he said, the kind words he said, and later posted on social media about wXw and that they would miss him a lot.
He said they would not comment on the decision itself but wanted to make sure that people knew how much they appreciated Starr as a person as well as a talent. He said they made the decision when they set up the match a few months ago. Jung praised Starr for his work ethic and that he always showed up, eager to give his best and help people, stating examples of the four way at their 19th Anniversary show, theior two January shows in France, the cage match in January at Back to the Roots, the Dragunov match in February at Dead End, and Saturday’s performance.
He said Starr went out as an absolute professional and that they hold him in the best regards. Jung said Starr said he’ll always be a wXw guy and they’ll always have his back.
The one thing to say for wXw is that they built this match up, gave Starr a storyline exit so fans would get closure and a reason of him not being there, and giving him a live mic after the show. In PROGRESS, it was seemingly the same deal. There, he simply lost a match to Jimmy Havoc on December 39th and hasn’t been heard from or seen since.
It will be interesting what the future has in store for Starr, who still holds the OTT world title in Ireland and also the SWE (Southside Wrestling Entertainment) title, which now is part of RevPro (who have a working relationship with New Japan) as well as the Liverpool-based TNT world title. OTT seemingly has a relationship with WWE, but it seems less intense than what WWE, PROGRESS, ICW or EVOLVE have.
If you want to take a deep dive into the whole topic, Will Cooling, who also was there this weekend has an excellent article on Starr and his political campaigning among others things over.
Cara Noir wins 16 Carat Gold, Mike Bailey and Bandido have the match of the weekend
Noir (real name Thomas Dawkins), the current PROGRESS champion, had his first matches in 2010 to mixed success under his given name and several other monikers. He almost quit the business in 2016, but after a conversation with longtime friend Chris Brookes, decided to develop the gimmick of Cara Noir, the black swan of wrestling, supposedly a former ballet dancer (and computer genius with an MMA background) that was kicked out of the academy for his anger management issues while being harassed there.
He wears swan-like face paint and enters the ring in darkness with just a spotlight on him to Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake before a performance in the ring where he brings up his cape of peacock feathers. He is a very unique individual who views wrestling as the ultimate art form and expresses himself through facials, body language, mannerisms, and a unique move set. He does dozens of small things in each match which almost feel like a musical composition. After a few notes, you recognize the composer, but like music, each match is different with different overtures and themes reaching back to earlier spots in the match, and often enough there are unique things he does with certain opponents, exclusive to that match.
Noir beat “Speedball” Mike Bailey in the finals in a very good, dramatic match that went 28:27 and saw both guys put on a great performance. While it was face vs. face, Bailey showed some heel tendencies. Noir, at times, very much played the dying swan. At one point, he took three running kicks to the chest with Bailey becoming more and more reluctant to deliver the punishment and asking Noir to just quit. Noir looked pained by having to go yet another round, but asked Bailey to pull him back up and deliver another kick, the third after which he suddenly powered up. He also hugged Bailey and seemingly told him everything was going to be OK before delivering his own finishing sequence.
They also did some crazy spots like Bailey missing his moonsault knee drop both on the apron and on the steel ramp at one point. Noir kicked out of the Flamingo Driver which looks like a variation of the One Winged Angel. After Bailey missed the moonsault knees on the ramp, Noir hooked in the Blackout sleeper and then left Bailey laying in order to get the countout victory, but Bailey made it back at nine.
The finishing sequence was Bailey hitting a top rope moonsault fallaway slam which Noir narrowly kicked out of and came back with a Madame Guilltone and package piledriver for a kickout by Bailey. Noir finally hit a Blackout sleeper suplex, followed by a Blackout sleeper for the victory by referee stoppage. Noir pulled up Bailey, who still seemed out of it, for a long hug before posing with the trophy up the ramp and in the ring.
Bailey had another great outing the night before, facing Bandido in the match of the weekend. In a near eighteen minute match, they did some unreal spots and had the crowd in the palms of their hands, starting off with duel chants and songs and having people in an absolute frenzy as the match progressed. After a ton of spectacular near falls, the finish was a fisherman moonsault fallaway slam from the top rope by Bandido. Afterwards, the fans starting pelting the ring with money to the point there was fear somebody could get hurt by being hit with a coin. Ring announcer Thommy Giessen then made the call to ask people to throw notes instead of coins.
Both men hugged and even brought Bandido superfan Chris Lawson, who was at ringside, into the ring and put him on their shoulders. From the match itself to the post-match, this was one of those 16 Carat experiences on par with the surprise Ilja Dragunov return, the Alexander Wolfe surprise last year, and Jurn Simmons turning on Karsten Beck to win the world title, an angle no one will forget and will be talked about and featured in video highlights forever.
Bailey beat UK indy and NOAH prodigy Chris Ridgeway in the first round, Bandido in the second, and put away favorite Jurn Simmons in the semifinals. Noir beat al-Ani in round one, eliminated Jeff Cobb in round two and then Eddie Kingston in the semi before going on to win the tournament.
Two other standouts were wXw’s homegrown talents Julian Pace and The Rotation who hung in there move for move and spot for spot with Bandido and Puma King respectively in the first round. Pace, 24, who only has been wrestling professionally for less than four years, is one of the most exciting young workers in Europe today, has great speed and tremendous flying ability and never looked out of place, going toe-to-toe with one of the most amazing wrestlers out there in 2020. He is the first full-fledged graduate of the wXw Academy and was trained, among others, by WALTER and Timothy Thatcher.
Rotation is a similar high flyer and started in 2013 after training at the Westside Dojo, the predecessor of the wXw Academy, before it became a full-time school. After a few years in wXw in an enhancement role, he toured Mexico in the summer of 2015, mostly working for DTU, but also had two matches for AAA. He returned full time in wXw last fall and has been great ever since. He hung with Puma King in many typical lucha spots and did impressive stunts, such as standing on the top rope, jumping up to avoid a punch and landing on the rope again or cartwheeling along the top rope to avoid another attack. Puma King and Black Taurus also both looked good the whole weekend, and hopefully international fans will see more of them outside of AAA.
Simmons, who many saw as the favorite for the tournament, looked impressive, both with an improved physique and a new moveset which included power moves such as a gorilla press and athletic moves like a standing moonsault. Him being eliminated by Bailey was a surprise to many and a return to the main event picture seems imminent.
Alexander Wolfe makes a surprise appearance, wins wXw Shotgun title, gets attacked by Lucky Kid’s new heel group
On Sunday, a wXw Shotgun title match was scheduled between champion Avalanche and Ilja Dragunov, set up after the finish of Bobby Gunns vs. Avalanche at February’s Dead End in Hamburg when they did an angle where Dragunov attacked Avalanche and got beat up.
Most suspected this to be a bonus match of sorts, a hard-hitting battle between two former partners who have always delivered and as a way to get Dragunov on the show the day he was first available after two days of NXT UK tapings.
During ring introductions, ring announcer Thommy Giessen was handed another cue card and announced that the wXw championship board of directors had added a third man to the match at which point the Ringkampf/Imperium music played and Alexander Wolfe appeared to a big pop. Initially this was somewhat lackluster since it was a mix of Dragunov getting added to the world title match against Bad Bones two years ago and Wolfe appearing as a surprise with his old Sanity-gimmick last year.
They had a fun match with Dragunov initially suggesting Wolfe team with him, playing off their previous friendship and NXT UK contracts, but Wolfe refused.
The finish came when Dragunov hit Torpedo Moscow on Avalanche, who fell out of the ring. Wolfe then pinned Dragunov after a sitdown power bomb to win the title to a shocked reaction as nobody believed that to be a possibility.
Wolfe held the then-vacant title in 2014, ironically winning it after the then-champion Dragunov was out with a broken skull after suffering the injury at a WWE tryout in 2013. Wolfe cut a promo, saying that the title meant a lot: it meant that the champion had to be the best and defend it against all comers.
He then put the title down in the middle of the ring and said that he could not take it back with him to the U.S. After some boos, he reconsidered and said “F*ck it. I’ll stay in Germany and defend this title until somebody from the locker room takes it from me, but I’m not going to make it easy for them.”
At this point, the big eye, which had distracted Lucky Kid in matches over the past few weeks including his first round loss to Simmons in 16 Carat, flashed on the screen. As Wolfe looked at it, he was attacked by two burly guys in black shirts (Abdul Kenan and Aytac Bahar, who teamed as Grup Arnasi in the Berlin-based GWF and also were trained there). Lucky ran out and confronted them, signaling to Wolfe to stay back before attacking him and the three then beat him down.
Lucky then cut a fiery, bitter promo as it was important to him to explain what he was doing here. He had been a part of various groups over the past few years and slowly lost his honor and his identity in the process. In RISE, he was the crazy guy; with Schadenfreude, he was the stupid, childish kid; with The Purge (Ivan Kiev & Pete Bouncer), he was their good friend Lucky. Now, he was the leader of his own group and would go by the name his mother had given him, Metehan (his actual real first name; he has Turkish roots but was born in Germany).
He said he would get everything back that was taken from him and that his new group would be called Ezel (which is Turkish for “Eternity” based on a show of the same name that seemingly aired in Turkey years ago). He slapped each of the Grup Anarsi members and then proceeded to beat down Wolfe some more.
Wolfe has since been confirmed for five upcoming shows (3/28 in Frankfurt, 3/29 in Erfurt, 4/17 in Limbach-Oberfrohna, 4/18 in his hometown of Dresden, and 4/19 in Leipzig). No matches have been confirmed, but matches against former champion Avalanche, Dragunov (maybe in Dresden as Dragunov was injured when they last wanted to do the match there in November), Metehan, and possibly a tag match against Grup Anarsi al seem like logical choices.
Shoot style reigns supreme with AMBITION 12 thanks to two young guns and a senior citizen BattlArts superfight
AMBITION, wXw’s take on the shoot style concept, keeps playing an important part at these big festival weekends. After almost abandoning the concept after four events (plus an almost forgotten AMBITION on the Road mini-tournament) back in 2013 due to low attendance, they brought it back as an experiment in October 2014 as part of the World Triangle League weekend with much better success as the hardcore fans in town from all over Europe ate the unique show up.
They moved it to March in 2016 and it has been a part of 16 Carat weekends ever since, expanding to a show in Toronto over SummerSlam weekend last year, as well as a “Wildcard Edition” this past October. Last year’s AMBITION 10 and AMBITION 11 in Toronto also featured Yuki Ishikawa, the legendary founder of BattlArts, who seemed to have the time of his life in his fights.
AMBITION also undoubtedly inspired concepts such as Bloodsport over WrestleMania weekend and Tetsujin: Hybrid Wrestling in the UK, which even added two more shows after its initial one shot event. It was at the final Tetsujin show in November, where Tassilo Jung, who is also wXw’s head referee, officiated some matches as Tetsujin and wXw had worked together from the start. It was there that he saw Ethan Allen and Luke Jacobs, the two members of the England-based Young Guns, have a match against each other and immediately offered to bring them in for AMBITION.
While both men are barely of drinking age (in the UK, at least), they trained at some of the premier schools of the country and put an intensity into their AMBITION match that would put more established grapplers to shame. Allen won their bout by submission, but both men won over the hearts of those in the Turbinenhalle that day. They also prevailed at the Jay-AA Tag Team Experts Wild Card Tournament later that night, a fun, parejas increibles style gauntlet, supposedly decided by an app that Absolute Andy programmed on the fly the night before (including creating all the graphics for it).
Then, there were Yuki Ishikawa and Daisuke Ikeda, longtime rivals and partners, who have been in the ring with each other on close to 100 occasions dating back to 1994 and at least 60 times in BattlArts. They gave people a first taste of what to expect when they teamed with each other against Chris Ridgeway & Daniel Makabe at the Inner Circle show, a prelude to the 16 Carat string of events. This was a dream match, especially for Makabe who traded BattlArts tapes as young as 14 and idolized Ishikawa ever since. He told me a story of when he first met Ishikawa in Toronto last summer. He told him about it and Ishikawa was baffled that some kid in the U.S. actually got his tapes from Japan. It was then when he told him “Maybe, one day, you and me, we work together”.
In their AMBITION fight, the impression people got was that they legitimately tried to end each other then and there. Never before have I seen two men aged 52 and 53, respectively, hit each other so hard with punches, slaps, kicks and shoot headbutts and getting so much joy out of the process. The headbutts especially were something else with both men having huge bumps on their forehead, but who am I to tell those two men what to do or not do. This was a fight that people should go out of their way to see.
They faced each other one more time the next night as Ishikawa teamed with longtime protégé Timothy Thatcher who had his farewell match in wXw for the time being against Ikeda & WALTER. Those four, the answer to the trivia question of who you would want to back you up in a bar fight, had another hell of an outing as you would expect from them. This was another symphony of violence, especially when Ishikawa no sold WALTER’s chops. Thatcher submitted Ikeda in an armbar after which the four men paid each other their respects.
Thatcher then refused to address the crowd and indicated he would choke up and cry if he did. Then, when the whole roster came out on the stage to say goodbye, he could not handle it anymore and left the ring through an exit by the crowd. Thus ended the era of Timothy Thatcher in wXw, the last and only real man in the world, who is kind enough to let us lesser men live in it.
Alexander James is an abusive boyfriend, Killer Kelly is no longer with NXT UK
A story that progressed throughout the weekend (and on World Women’s Day, nonetheless) was the story of Alexander James being an abusive, toxic boyfriend to his girlfriend Killer Kelly.
The backstory was that Kelly came out during a James vs. Jurn Simmons Singapore cane match back in December in order to stop James from putting a beating on Simmons, at which point, AJ shoved her down.
Kelly, who wrestled and beat newcomer Stephanie Maze (an Alex Wright trainee with a kickboxing background) at Inner Circle, then came out during James’ tournament match against Jeff Cobb on Friday to cheer him on. James didn’t take kindly to it, screamed at her, and ordered her to the back before eventually losing to Cobb.
On Saturday, James came out and demanded the best challenger available, at which point Alpha Kevin came out who James quickly beat with a cobra clutch. Kevin had his girlfriend, Melanie Gray, with him who was on crutches due to a knee injury. James kept attacking Kevin and also shoved down Gray, who entered the ring despite her injury to help out her boyfriend. Kelly came out to confront James, but in a backstage promo later, was defending him to Kevin and Melanie, claiming that he had a hard time and needed support. Melanie then told Kelly that she would show her what real support looked like and offered Kelly her title shot against Amale the next day.
Then, at Sunday’s Feature event, which was taped in the afternoon, Kelly and Stephanie Maze beat Valkyrie and Baby Allison with Maze getting the deciding pinfall. A furious James came out again and berated Kelly, telling her he lacked the killer instinct she once had and asked why she let a rookie get the deciding win. He also threatened to punch Maze at that point and sent Kelly to the back to watch what a real killer looked like after which he faced and beat CZW champion Joe Gacy.
On Sunday, Kelly (who refused the shot) had another backstage promo with James where he again told her she was wasting chances and how she got opportunities he never got and never used them to her advantage. Kelly and Gray then presented Maze as the new surprise challenger for Amale, who eventually beat her. James then came out once more and again berated Kelly, beat down Kevin and Levaniel, and threatened to beat up Melanie, telling Kelly to decide between the love of the fans or the love of him. Kelly, seemingly choosing James, sulked to the back while James beat up Kevin some more.
The promos here were really good and I am intrigued to see where the story goes as it gives both James and Kelly something to do, and also can involve Melanie while she recuperates her injury, plus Kevin, Levaniel, and possibly Amale and Karsten Beck when he returns.
Kelly also confirmed that she is no longer with NXT UK, which was obvious since she appeared for RevPro at their March 1st show, attacking Giselle Shaw and also wrestlling for EVE twice in non-dark matches after last being at NXT UK in October. Kelly also is the first female Ringkampf brand athlete.
Maze has a good look and good movement, but still is very rough around the edges and needs to improve her ring speed and precision. Then again, she started just over two years ago and had only around 60 matches, so changes should be noticeable soon especially if she spends more time at the wXw Academy.
As far as Beck (who is an on-screen GM as the “Director of Sports”), Jung said at the media panel that he had some issues (possibly medically related as he had surgery for a brain tumor twice before) but they would not comment on it and said they’d let him talk about what they were on his own time, and when those things were sorted out, he would probably be back.
wXwNOW Showcase a success, CZW returns to Germany
wXw’s streaming service wXwNOW features a plethora of different promotions from all around the world. Seven of them joined forces to present the wXwNOW Showcase with each of them presenting once match. The Showcase followed the somewhat ill-received #WrestlingDeutschland shows of the past two years which had a similar concept for smaller promotions in Germany. While the first show was fun, the second was mostly abysmal with many bad matches and talent clearly not ready for a bigger stage.
The Showcase was generally considered a success with every promoter very happy about it and most matches being good and well received by the crowd, especially the ones put on by CZW (wXw’s longtime U.S. partner promotion), SMASH (Canada), Rising Sun (Italy) and White Wolf Wrestling (Spain). DJ Hyde, the owner of CZW, came out after the Joe Gacy vs. Anthony Greene match and announced that CZW would return to Germany on November 14 in Frankfurt and would also “bring the ultra violence”. The date will be a doubleheader with CZW promoting an afternoon show and wXw promoting in the same venue in the evening.
Odds and ends from various panels and informal talks
Tassilo Jung said that they were monitoring the WWE Network situation closely and could not say what it meant for them or if anything would be changing regarding a multi tier system and their content eventually being on the Network. He said they didn’t have that level of access to WWE management and basically followed the situation of Michelle Wilson and George Barrios being gone from the company just like everybody else.
They also said that they did not see WWE pulling talent or having NXT UK tapings head to head as a major problem as they saw during the Tag Festival with all the late cancellations and that they could work around it. He said Lio Rush very much had been the top draw as most tickets moved after he was announced. He said WWE offered them a replacement but would not comment who it was. At that point, they had already gotten Jeff Cobb, who was available that weekend.
It looks like Veit Müller has burned his bridges with wXw for the time being as he told them just four days in advance that he would not be there. He pulled out of most of the Tag Festival in October due to complications his wife had with his pregnancy which was totally understandable. Jung said the minimum they expect from their talent is to show up to work and how they would not work with Müller for the time being. Müller later posted a tweet with his child, saying “some things are more important than wrestling,”
Francis Kaspin is out with a herniated/bulging disc. He tried various methods of therapy, none of which have really worked. They brought him in after his injury, but he eventually said he’d prefer not to come as each long car drive back and forth really hampered his progress in recovery. They will see when he feels better to incorporate him back into storylines.
They haven’t talked to Jazzy Gabert since she quit NXT UK, but no door ever is closed in wrestling and they’d be open to work with her again if the right opportunity arises.
They also were very understanding of the whole Alex Shelley situation and hope they will be able to bring him in one day. Felix Kohlenberg was been waiting for more than a decade to book him.
Killer Kelly seemingly quit NXT UK, but did not want to further elaborate on it. She appeared for RevPro and EVE in the UK after she last was at NXT UK tapings in early October. She also now is the first female Ringkampf athlete for their sports apparel/merchandise brand.
DJ Hyde talked extensively about the various deal they had for streaming their content, including wXwNOW, their own CZW Studios (on Pivotshare), IWTV, and FITE TV as well as Stone Cutter Media where they put old content on PPV around the world through Steve Karel, who also was instrumental in the old ECW television deals. He said while he didn’t have all the data yet, the FITE TV numbers looked really good. He said it was a challenge to upgrade old tapes to be HD ready and how each iPPV they did was a struggle as the money will not come in for months. He said they would be simulcasting their first show on IWTV and FITE TV and also would get on PPV soon.
Methehan (the former Lucky Kid) reiterated to me that his new group, Ezel, was not to be understood as any kind of Turkish nationalist group and that he very much considers himself German as he was born and raised in the country.
The full 39-minute media panel with the wXw office can also be viewed here.
Julian Pace pinned Rust Taylor after the Best Moonsault Ever (9:22)
Avalanche pinned “Goldenboy” Santos after a DRSKR Bomb (6:44)
Four Way: Marius Al-Ani beat The Rotation, Hektor and Vertigo after pinning Vertigo with a Diamond Driver (4:24)
Jay Skillet pinned Absolute Levandy (Levaniel) after an FtY (9:57): Pure comedy gold, with Levaniel doing a spot-on Absolute Andy impersonation
Killer Kelly pinned Stephanie Maze after the Carnation Revolution (9:17)
Shigehiro Irie pinned Scotty Davis after a Beast Bomber (8:30)
Daisuke Ikeda & Yuki Ishikawa beat Chris Ridgeway & Daniel Makabe when Ikeda pinned Ridgeway after a high kick (17:44): Super fun shoot-style match with everybody being great at the style
Alternate Four Way Dance: Rust Taylor defeated Levaniel, Hektor & Scotty Davis when he tapped out Levaniel with the Rings of Saturn (6:30)
16 Carat Gold first round: “Speedball” Mike Bailey pinned Chris Ridgeway after a Flamingo Driver (12:55)
16 Carat Gold first round: Jurn Simmons pinned Lucky Kid after a piledrive (4:32): The eye appeared again at the beginning of the match, prompting Lucky to almost get pinned right away
16 Carat Gold first round: The Rotation pinned Puma King after Victory over Gravity (8:57)
16 Carat Gold first round: Eddie Kingston pinned Daniel Makabe after the Backfist to the Future (9:33)
16 Carat Gold first round: Bandido pinned Julian Pace after a Top Rope Fallaway Moonsault (9:39)
16 Carat Gold first round: Shigehiro Irie pinned Black Taurus iafter a Beast Bomber (10:30)
16 Carat Gold first round: Jeff Cobb pinned Alexander James after Tour of the Island (12:44)
16 Carat Gold first round: Cara Noir beat Marius Al-Ani via ref stoppage after Al-Ani passed out in the Blackout Sleeper (11:32)
wXw World Tag Team Championship: Jay AA (Jay Skillet & Absolute Andy) beat Pretty Bastards (Maggot & Prince Ahura) (c) after a belt shot and the JAA-Klasse (15:47): This was a fun, very good match. Bobby Gunns and Norman Harras came out at one point, handed the belts to the bastards who clocked Jay-AA with them but didn’t get the pin; referee Tassilo Jung then caught Gunns and Harras in the ring with the belts a second time and threw them out, allowing Jay-AA to use the belts and then hit JAA-Klasse for the win and title change.
First Round Match: Daniel Makabe submitted Kevin Lloyd with an STF
First Round Match: Chris Ridgeway beat Vincent Heisenberg via TKO after a head kick: Heisenberg replaced Veit Müller here and is actually the son of Baron von Hagen, the first ever 16 Carat Gold winner back in 2006
First Round Match: Rust Taylor submitted Tyson Dux with a modified double arm bar
First Round Match: Scotty Davis submitted “Speedball” Mike Bailey with an arm bar/hammerfists combo
Next Generation AMBITION Fight: Ethan Allen submitted Luke Jacobs with a double arm stretch and kicks to the back: Really impressive performance by those two, they should be back in wXw soon and will also debut for PROGRESS at the end of the month
Semifinal: Daniel Makabe submitted Scotty Davis with an upside down armbar headscissors combo
Semifinal: Chris Ridgeway beat Rust Taylor by TKO after a head kick
AMBITION Superfight: Daisuke Ikeda knocked out Yuki Ishikawa with a punt kick: This was unreal violence between two senior citizens who looked to kill each other with death
Finals: Daniel Makabe submitted Chris Ridgeway with an Indian-style Cattle Mutilation
16 Carat Gold quarter final: Cara Noir submitted Jeff Cobb with the Blackout Sleeper (11:40)
16 Carat Gold quarter final: Eddie Kingston pinned The Rotation after a Backfist to the Future (9:26)
Marius Al-Ani pinned Daniel Makabe after a Diamond Driver (9:44): This was preceded by a backstage segment, where Al-Ani challenged Makabe after his AMBITION 12 tournament win earlier in the day
The Young Guns won the Jay AA Tag Team Experts Wildcard Gauntlet (24:09): The build-up to this was hilarious, after Andy cracked up the crowd with his dad humor, then claimed he had designed a graphic for the match with the “paid version of Microsoft Paint” and studied color theory for it, plus he had developed an app which would randomly choose partners for the gauntlet.
Puma King & Julian Pace beat Leon van Gasteren & Lucky Kid when Puma pinned Lucky after a sitdown powerbomb (5:42): This had Pace and van Gasteren, actual tag partners against each other, which Pace was upset about
Black Taurus & Avalanche beat Puma King & Julian Pace when Taurus pinned Puma King (4:22)
Black Taurus & Avalanche beat Tarik & Norman Harras when Taurus pinned Tarik after a Spinning Fishermans Buster (3:42): Harras and Tarik didn’t get along, leading to a challenge and an eight men tag at the wXw Feature Event taped on Sunday afternoon, where harras, The Pretty bastards and Oliver Carter faced The Four Pillars of SMASH
Black Taurus & Avalanche beat DJ Hyde & Levaniel when Avalanche pinned Hyde after a DRSKR Bomb (0:46): This was amazing. Hyde was upset that Levaniel, who does a sleazy “Prince of the Stars” gimmick, where he claims that he has a castle in the sky, sees the most shooting stars in the sky and wants to spread “the love” was his partner. While Hyde was getting beat up in the ring, Levaniel, totally oblivious of what was going on, cut this amazing promo about how his father was a death match wrestler, who made him sleep in broken glass and would set his blanket on fire before putting him to bed. Hyde then chased him away.
Scotty Davis & Chris Ridgeway beat Black Taurus & Avalanche when Davis submitted Taurus in the Rolling Prawn Hold (2:01)
The Young Guns (Ethan Allen & Luke Jacobs) beat Scotty Davis & Chris Ridgeway after a Gotch-style Piledriver/PK combo on Davis (7:36) to earn a shot at the wXw tag team championship
Alexander James submitted Alpha Kevin in 2:02 with a cobra clutch: James kept attacking Kevin, then shoved down an injured Malenie gray who came to make the save; Killer Kelly then came out to confront him
16 Carat Gold quarter final: Mike Bailey pinned Bandido with a Meteora Dream (17:36): Unreal good, match of the weekend. The fans showered both men with money afterwards and it was one of the all time great 16 Carat matches
16 Carat Gold quarterfinal: Jurn Simmons pinned Shigehiro Irie after a piledriver (9:01)
wXw Unified World Wrestling Championship – Title vs. Career: Bobby Gunns (c) pinned David Starr after an Ehrenmann Driver (41:15)
wXw We Love Wrestling Feature Event (March 8, 2020/afternoon – attendance: 450, Turbinenhalle 1, Oberhausen/Germany)
This takes place chronologically between Night 2 and Night 3 as far as storyline progression goes
Four-Way-Dance: Scotty Davis beat Daniel Makabe, Rust Taylor & Anthony Greene after pinning Greene with a Spinning Fishermans Buster (7:59)
Eight-Man-Tag-Team Match: Pretty Bastards, Oliver Carter & Norman Harras beat The Four Pillars of SMASH (Tarik, Sebastian Suave, Tyson Dux & Brent Banks) when Carter pinned Suave after a Redlight Driver/springboard moonsault combo (16:43)
Marius Al-Ani pinned Chris Ridgeway after a Diamond Driver (6:35)
Stephanie Maze & Killer Kelly beat Baby Allison & Valkyrie when Maze pinned Allison after the Black Mass (7:24)
Alexander James submitted Joe Gacy with a corba clutch (7:04)
wXw World Tag Team Championship: Jay AA (Jay Skillet & Absolute Andy) (c) beat The Young Guns (Ethan Allen & Luke Jacobs) after the JAA-Klasse on Jacobs (14:42). Bobby Gunns, Norman Harras, Oliver Carter and The Pretty Bastards attacked Jay-AA after the match, until Julian Pace and Scotty Davis made the save
WALTER pinned Shigehiro Irie after a big splash of the top rope (12:51)
16 Carat Gold semi-final: “Speedball” Mike Bailey pinned Jurn Simmons after a Flamingo Driver (10:40)
16 Carat Gold semi-final: Cara Noir submitted Eddie Kingston with the Blackout Sleeper (8:15)
wXw Women:s Championship: Amale pinned Stephanie Maze after the Champions Maker (9:06) Maze replaced the injured Melanie Gray here, after Killer Kelly refused the shot since she believed she hadn’t earned it; after the match, there war another scene with Alexander James and Kelly
Special Attraction Tag Team Match: Timothy Thatcher & Yuki Ishikawa beat WALTER & Daisuke Ikeda when Thatcher submitted Ikeda with an arm bar (16:42)
wXw Shotgun Championship: Alexander Wolfe beat Avalanche (c) & Ilja Dragunov after pinning Dragunov with a sit-down power bomb (12:44)
Bandido, Julian Pace & Jeff Cobb beat Puma King, Black Taurus & Hektor when Bandido pinned Hektor with the 21 Plex (12:28)
16 Carat Gold finals: Cara Noir beat Speedball Mike Bailey via ref stoppage in the Blackout Sleeper (28:27)
This coming weekend, the wrestling world will be looking to Oberhausen, Germany, once again.
The mid-sized city of about 210,000 people usually doesn’t have all that much going for it. There’s the CentrO (one of the biggest malls in Europe), a concert arena that both WWE and WCW ran in the past and that hosts a number or musicals throughout the year. Besides that, it’s neither very pretty nor very important on a global scale. About 20 minutes from the Düsseldorf airport, it sits amid the Ruhr area, which isn’t exactly the most inviting part of the country you could venture to.
And yet, this coming weekend, about 1600 wrestling fans from all around Europe and the world will come to this town, pack the Turbinenhalle, a concert arena that usually hosts either metal concerts or techno parties and generally go crazy as the 15th annual wXw 16 Carat Gold Tournament starts this Friday, led in by a more intimate Inner Circle show on Thursday, hosted at the wXw Academy in nearby Essen.
Besides the three-day tournament, there will also be an AMBITION tournament (shoot style wrestling, much like Bloodsport, which was somewhat inspired by the format), a showcase for promotions from all around the world, which are features on the promotion’s wXwNOW streaming service, another show taped for the service on Sunday afternoon, and a morning show by WrestlingKULT, a smaller German indy promotion that runs the KULT Tempel, a smaller arena right next to the bigger Turbinenhalle.
There also will be an afterparty going on after the show on Saturday, so those so inclined can enjoy wrestling related activities from 10 AM to about 4 AM the next day. No wonder some call this weekend the European version of WrestleMania. Looking at some of the 130 participants that competed (and will compete) at 16 Carat over the years, the star power certainly is there.
Past Participants: A Who’s Who of Indie Stars
Some of the winners and runner-ups of previous tournaments: Tommy End (Aleister Black, twice), WALTER, Chris Hero (Kassius Ohno, twice), Zack Sabre Jr., El Generico (Sami Zayn), Ilja Dragunov, Sami Callihan and SHINGO are among the more well-known names who took home the 16 Tournament Cup in the past as well as German mainstays “Bad Bones” John Klinger, Lucky Kid, Absolute Andy, and Baron von Hagen.
Other names that made the finals since 2006 include Bryan Danielson (Daniel Bryan), Drake Younger (current NXT referee Drake Wuertz), Axel Tischer (Alexander Wolfe), Axel Dieter Jr. (Marcel Barthel), and David Starr.
They were joined by a who’s who of names now or formerly active in either WWE/NXT, AEW, ROH, or Japan: ACH (formerly Jordan Miles), Adam Cole, Angelico, Cedric Alexander, Chris Brookes, Chris Sabin, Chuck Taylor, Claudio Castagnoli (Cesaro), Cody Rhodes, Colt Cabana, Daisuke Sekimoto, Davey Richards, Donovan Dijak(ovic), Doug Williams, Drew Gallowy (McIntyre), Eddie Kingston, Fenix, Fit Finlay, Go Shiozaki, Jimmy Jacobs, Johnny Gargano, Johnny Moss, Jonah Rock (Bronson Reed), Jonathan Gresham, Keith Lee, KUSHIDA, Mark Haskins, Martin Stone (Danny Burch), Marty Scurll, Matt Jackson, Matt Riddle, Matt Striker, Matt Sydal, Nick jackson, Nigel McGuinness, PAC, Paul London, PCO, Pentagon Jr., Rey Horus, Ricky Marvin, Ricochet, Rocky Romero, Shane Strickland (Isaiah Swerve Scott), Silas Young, Super Crazy, Timothy Thatcher, Tomasso Ciampa, Travis Banks, Trent, Trevor Lee (Cameron Grimes), Tyler Black (Seth Rollins), Uhaa Nation (Apollo Crews), Will Ospreay, and Yuji Okabayashi all were part of one or more tournaments over the years.
You can just imagine some of the matches those guys put on.
The 2020 lineup
This year feels a tad different than past year as some of the indie star power isn’t there. wXw entered into a relationship with WWE at some point during the past 18 months, so some names currently affiliated with AEW or ROH seem to be off limits. Nonetheless, when WWE pulled Lio Rush from competing at the tournament today, wXw stepped in and booked Jeff Cobb, who was been affiliated with both rival promotions recently, but is a free agent for all intents and purposes. The rest of the field also looks intriguing.
Another name who canceled, due to the recent coronavirus outbreak in Europe, was Alex Shelley who cited health risks as he works in the medical field and has a lot of immunocompromised patients who he did not want to put at risk. He would not have been in the tournament, but was scheduled to appear as a special attraction on Saturday.
Melanie Gray, who would have made her return to Oberhausen as she lost a loser leaves town match in January 2019 and just won a match to allow her to appear in the city again last month, injured her knee in training and looks to be needing surgery, so she is out. Veit Müller, the sole remaining full-time member of Ringkampf, the original Imperium group, also canceled his appearance for the weekend.
wXw just announces first round matches but no brackets, so each day, the matches from the second round up are a surprise to the fans:
Marus Al-Ani vs. Cara Noir
Al-Ani, a wXw regular, enters the 16 Carat for the fourth time, making the second round in his 2017 debut, but eliminated in the first round in both 2018 and 2019. Coming off a recent suspension (he actually slapped a fan who insulted him in late September 2019), he looks to advance to the wXW main event picture and a good showing might put him there. A smaller but very muscular and athletic wrestler, he also regularily competes at various fitness themed competitions on TV and also had some smaller TV roles.
Noir, the current PROGRESS champion, is a unique character. Known as “The Black Swan” of pro wrestling, he has a unique entrance and great ring costume and is no slouch in the ring as some of his past matches with PAC or Mike Bailey showed. He makes his wXw in-ring debut here as he challenged Al-Abi during January’s Back to the Roots marquee event. Both men need to make an impact here, so it’s hard to make a prediction.
Jeff Cobb vs. Alexander James
Cobb, the former Olympic athlete is one of the hottest and most sought-after wrestlers of 2020. Attached to ROH until recently, he made his AEW debut as Chris Jericho’s paid mercenary several weeks ago ago and is expected to return to New Japan later in the year. He is an impressive wrestler, a great worker, and has a very charismatic personality. As a late replacement for the aforementioned Lio Rush, I’m not sure how he figures into the plans, but the fans will certainly love him. He was supposed to be in the 16 Carat a few years ago, but had to cancel due to Lucha Underground tapings at the time, so it’s a bit of poetic justice he now enters the tournament as a late replacement.
The dastardly Maryland native James enters the tournament for the second time after losing in the first round back in 2018. Originally trained by Drew Gulak, he has progressed to become an accomplished worker and semi-regular with wXw. He is a trainer at the wXw Academy and generally has a very technical, albeit brutal, style and is great on promos. He recently lost a blood feud against former tag partner and best friend Jurn Simmons and certainly could use a win to bounce back from his recent losses. I still see Cobb going over here and James possibly being motivated for even more drastic measures, especially since his real-life relationship with fellow wXw import Killer Kelly was recently burst as part of the show.
Bandido vs. Julian Pace
Making his wXw debut, Bandido is arguably is one of the hottest names in indie wrestling today and has tournament experience, winning PWG’s BOLA tournament this past September. His first major U.S. appearance was as part of the first All In main event, where he teamed with Rey Mysterio and Rey Fenix against the Golden Elite. Since, he has become a regular in ROH and also appears in CMLL as well as in New Japan. A good performance in 16 Carat would certainly also make him more of a household name in Europe where he already performed for both PROGRESS and RevPro.
Pace is a wXw success story and a testament to their wrestling school. He made his debut nearly four years ago and had no prior wrestling experience before starting to train at the school in Essen, Germany. Within a few years, he became one of the best, quick high flyers in Europe and has incredible speed and athletic ability. He began showing more charisma and intensity over the past year and certainly will be one of the building blocks for the company going forward. A win over Bandido would be the biggest win in his career and would make him a bigger star before his home crowd. This is his first time in 16 Carat and will certainly not be his last.
Daniel Makabe vs. Eddie Kingston
Makabe, already a veteran of 16 years, has largely flown under the radar on the U.S. indie scene until recently. The Canadian grappling expert is a regular with 3-2-1 BATTLE! in Seattle, where he had an awesome match series against fellow mat expert Timothy Thatcher. He recently also wrestled for Beyond, Black Label Pro and DEFY, so he is starting to built up his indie reputation. He also seems like one of the genuine nicest people in wrestling and got very emotional last October during a media event where he talked about what the Thatcher match series and his opponent’s appreciation meant to him. He first appeared for wXw’s AMBITION 11 tournament over SummerSlam weekend in August and later was booked in Germany for World Tag Team Festival this past October.
Kingston has been around even a year longer than Makabe, but was featured on a more prominent stage over the course of his career. A veteran of the indies, he appeared for ROH, EVOLVE, CZW, CHIKARA, AAW, Impact, Beyond, House of Hardcore and many others and recently also has been more active in Europe, wrestling for promotions such as RevPro, PROGRESS, OTT, ATTACK!, Fight Club: PRO and Schadenfreude & Friends to name a few. Kingston appeared at 16 Carat back in 2013 and wa scheduled to team with David Starr at Tag Festival this past October, but had to pull out due to a family emergency.
Both men would benefit from a win here with Makabe looking to be the more logical choice to go over due to him maybe being able to make a second home here in Germany, much as Thatcher did in the past.
Chris Ridgeway vs. Mike Bailey
Ridgeway is one of the rising stars coming out of Europe and breaking out internationally. The 26-year old with a martial arts background extensively toured with NOAH in recent months, where he joined the Stinger stable and participated in the Global Junior League. He started in 2012 and was trained by Robbie Brookside and Johnny Moss, both men currently working in the WWE’s developmental system on both sides of the Atlantic. He may well be on WWE’s radar and a good performance with one of their partner promotions could raise his stock.
Bailey is one of the most talented workers in recent years, but unfortunately can’t show off his ring prowess in the U.S. as he tried entering the country on a tourist visa in order to wrestle, got caught, and banned from the for five years, a ban that should be lifted next year. A martial arts aficionado himself, he incorporates the style with exciting high flying action and has repeatedly enchanted wXw fans with his matches. The Canadian native has made Europe his second home, and appears for promotions such as wXw, GWF, RevPro, OTT and Fight Club: PRO on a regular basis. He also is a semi-regular with DDT in Japan and a number of indies in Canada. Bailey competed at 16 Carat in the past, getting eliminated in the first round in 2016 and making round two in 2017.
The Rotation vs. Puma King
Rotation is another homegrown talent of wXw, originally starting out in the Westside Dojo, the wXw Academy’s predecessor. An exciting high flyer on the small side, he toured with DTU in Mexico a few years ago and noticeably improved his style there. He is spectacular as a flyer and knows his lucha, so pairing him with anybody with a similar style always is a good idea. He buffed up a bit over the past year, which seems to have made him less injury prone. He is part of wXw’s trainer staff at the academy and had been booked for a UK tour with ROH. He also had a hand in training the aforementioned Pace, who he joins in making his 16 Carat debut.
Puma King, the son of El Felino and nephew of Negro Casasm has been a mainstay with CMLL for most of his career before joining rival promotion AAA in mid-2018 as part of Liga Elite. He made his U.S. debut in 2019, wrestling for promotions such as Impact, MLW, PWG, GCW and APW. He appeared for NJPW through the NJPW/CMLL working agreement and after leaving CMLL, he returned to Japan to wrestle for DDT in 2019. The 29-year-old is an exciting luchador and should have a great match with Rotation. He has teamed with Black Taurus in the past, so a loss by either man in an early round would probably mean seeing them in some exciting tag team action over the rest of the weekend.
Shigehiro Irie vs. Black Taurus
Irie, a Japanese journeyman wrestler, has been touted as some as the next incarnation of Daisuke Sekimoto. While not quite there yet, he has an impressive, burly physique and is a very good-to-great worker. He generally enters into “Beast Mode” at some point during his matches and displays his raw power, fulfilling the crowd’s desire of “Auf die Fresse” (beating somebody up). The 31-year old was a regular in wXw from December 2018 until March 2019 and also appeared for their Amerika ist Wunderbar show over WrestleMania weekend in April before briefly returning at the Shortcut to the Top battle royal this past August.
He wrestles everywhere from AJPW, BJW, DDT, Wrestle-1 and ZERO1 in Japan to wXw, PROGRESS, RevPro, ATTACK! and Fight Club: PRO in Europe to MLW, SMASH and Black Label Pro in North America. He certainly is a crowd favorite and someone who could easily make round three or even the finals without feeling out of place there.
Taurus made his debut for AAA in 2012 as Machine Rocker as part of Los Inferno Rockers and feuded with Los Psycho Circus. After departing AAA in 2016, he took up the mantle of Black Tauro and also wrestled for CMLL, The Crash, and IWRG, among others. He returned to AAA in 2018 and also started making appearances in the U.S., working for promotions such as Impact, MLW and PWG. A rather burly wrestler for lucha standards, he is nonetheless an impressive flyer. He teamed with Puma King in the past and also clashed with Bandido as part of a six-man effort in PWG in the past, so even if he doesn’t get very far in the tournament, we certainly will get some exciting matches out of him this weekend.
Lucky Kid vs. Jurn Simmons
Lucky Kid won last year’s tournament (after being eliminated in round two one year earlier), beating Timothy Thatcher, Axel Dieter jr. (Marcel Barthel), Ilja Dragunov, and upsetting WALTER in the finals. A former tag team specialist with Tarkan Aslan in the Young Lions, Lucky broke out as a singles star over the past few years. He made his PWG debut over BOLA weekend and was booked for a UK tour with ROH last year, teaming with Kyle Fletcher and replacing the injured Mark Davis. He was part of the RISE stable in wXw and still is associated with Schadenfreude in many of the UK indy promotions, including their own Schadenfreude & Friends league.
Fan support has dwindled in recent months as Lucky seemed lost in the partly aborted RISE vs. Schadenfreude feud when Mark Davis got injured and Chris Brookes got an offer to work for DDT in Japan. He quickly disposed of his former RISE associates Pete Bouncer and Ivan Kiev and got some wins in recent months, but certainty hasn’t arrived where someone who won Carat one year ago should be. Recently, a mysterious big eye appeared on the screen, distracting him in a four-way match eventually won by Simmons, so maybe a new storyline opportunity will pop up here if that person is revealed. The wXw office certainly knows about the problem and have assured fans that they have a way to fix things.
Simmons is a powerhouse from the Netherlands who seemingly has it all: a great look, good in-ring abilities, and tremendous promo skills when he is on. Quick-witted and with a good sense of humor, he equally works as a face and as a heel, even though he seems to prefer the latter role. A former wXw Unified World Wrestling champion, he fell from grace a few years back. Being stuck in the midcard, he teamed with Alexander James as The Crown, an alliance that ended when James turned on him after their first round loss at Tag Festival last year. They were involved in an intense, albeit somewhat lackluster feud, which culminated with Simmons standing tall after a bloody barbed wire cage match in January, looking to go on to bigger and better things.
As with Lucky, a win here might be the first step in catapulting him back to the main event scene, where many longtime fans believe he belongs. This certainly will be a match that both men need to win badly.
Alternate Four Way: Rust Taylor vs. Scotty Davis vs. Norman Harras vs. Hektor
The winner gets into the tournament if somebody gets injured. Honestly, all four deserve a spot.
Other highlights:
A number of title matches are scheduled for the weekend, some with high stakes while others will progress or culminate storylines:
wXw Tag Team Champions The Pretty Bastards (Maggot & Prince Ahura) vs. Jay-AA (Absolute Andy & Jay Skillet) (Friday)
These two have been clashing for a while now, leading to the de facto face turn of Jay-AA. who are super over with the fans as an entertaining comedy act. All four are good workers and this should be a great, fun match. The Bastards should keep the belts here as the story can be drawn out until the summer.
wXw World Unified Wrestling Champion Bobby Gunns vs. David Starr in a title vs. career match (Saturday)
Gunns won the title in a four way with champion Timothy Thatcher, Ilja Dragunov, and Starr back in December (Thatcher signed with WWE around that time), becoming a two-time champion. He since was on the losing end of the “Käfigschlacht” in January, a single cage, War-Games-style match against Starr, Avalanche, Julian Pace, and Leon van Gasteren, teaming with his stablemates Norman Harras and The Pretty Bastards.
He then defeated Avalanche in Hamburg at Dead End in February after interference by his stablemates. Starr, the current OTT and SWE champion was involved in a heated feud with Dragunov over the past few months, finally beating him in an unsanctioned match. He challenged Gunns to a title match and put his own career on the line, claiming that he had to come through since he neither won 16 Carat nor beat long-time rival WALTER in the past.
The stakes are high and there are some possibilities either way. Starr could lose and depart wXw, the promotion that put him on the map in Europe and arguably the international indie scene too. In a statement, he talked about what it would mean to him to be gone from wXw. If he wins, there is the possibility of facing WALTER, the man he never beat, down the line and finally catching his white whale, so to speak.
Starr is very outspoken and anti-establishment, looking to progress unionization and healthcare for those in the business. Some speculate he could leave for a bigger promotion. Then, there is also the question of who wins 16 Carat as that leads up to the big program over the summer. While some see Jurn Simmons as the favorite, Simmons vs. Starr has been done in the past and while those matches were good, it’s not something new.
Gunns’ title reigns have been somewhat lackluster with his new stable not quite living up to the standard of previous big heel stables in the company. They are comprised of young talents with good in-ring skills and great charisma, but they still need to click. Gunns winning on the big stage (he was in the main events of 16 Carat and World tag league/Festival shows in the past) would certainly legitimize him to a bigger audience. Again, the future program with the 16 Carat winner would be key here, so those who believe Gunns will win, see either Julian Pace or Shigehiro Irie as the winners. Gunns has history with both men.
In theory, we could see some kind of screwjob or no contest finish, but wXw usually doesn’t do those at these kinds of shows, and it would be a mistake to try it out in front of their biggest crowd at the biggest show of the year.
AMBITION 12 (Saturday at noon)
This is the 12th installment of wXw’s shoot style concept that started in 2010. After almost being cancelled after four installments due to little fan support, putting it on at festival weekends with more sophisticated international fans on hand gave the concept a second lease on life and inspired similar concepts in the UK and the U.S.
These shows are always fun and unique, which makes them both special and must-see. Previous winners include Bryan Danielson (Daniel Bryan), Rico Bushido, Axel Tischer (Alexander Wolfe), Zack Sabre Jr., Sasa keel, Carnage, Matt Riddle, Timothy Thatcher, Shigehiro Irie, and WALTER.
First round matches scheduled are Mike Bailey vs. Scotty Davis, Kevin Lloyd vs. Daniel Makabe, Vincent Heisenberg vs. Chris Ridgeway, and Tyson Dux vs. Rust Taylor in addition to the superfight and a “Next Generation fight” of Ethan Allen vs. Luke Jacobs.
Yuki Ishikawa vs. Daisuke Ikeda (AMBITION 12 superfight – Saturday)
Those two 50+ year old shoot style legends will battle it out in a fight for the ages. Ishikawa has been in for AMBITION last year, where he battled protege Timothy Thatcher and again for the promotion in Toronto past August. Ikeda can go with him hold for hold, and those two have teamed and wrestled numerous times over the past 25 years. If you are into MMA, Bloodsport events, or any other kind of grappling, this will be the match for you.
wXwNOW Showcase (Saturday afternoon)
wXwNOW is wXw’s streaming service, which also includes a number of other promotions from Europe and around the world. Those promotions will get the chance to put on one match each to showcase their talent, style, and unique brand.
Brent Banks vs. Tyson Dux vs. Tarik vs. Sebastian Suave (SMASH Wrestling from Canada)
Joe Gacy vs. Anthony Greene (CZW)
Kaiden vs. Rizo (White Wolf Wrestling from Spain)
Lexa Valo vs. Kat von Kaige (British Empire Wrestling)
Peter Olisander vs. Emeritus vs. Michael Fynne (Bodyslam Pro Wrestling from Denmark)
Carnage vs. Mexxberg (Wrestling KULT from Germany)
Luca de Pazzi vs. Nicolo Inverardi (Wrestling Promotion RIsing Sun from Italy)
wXw Shotgun Champion Avalanche vs. Ilja Dragunov (Sunday)
The build to this was basically Dragunov challenging Avalanche backstage after being involved in the post-match angle of Avalanche vs. Gunns. Those two have been both teammates and opponents in the past, and this looks to be a great strong style match. Avalanche should win as Dragunov is under a WWE contract and not available at all times.
wXw Women’s Champion Amale vs. TBA (Sunday Night)
Amale was supposed to wrestle Melanie Gray, who recently won the right to return to Oberhausen after losing a loser leaves town match to Toni Storm in early 2019. Unfortunately, Melanie injured her knee and seems to need surgery. Amale beat all of the regular women and all of the fly-ins put in front of her, often cheating, and Melanie was the last hope to beat her. It’s everyone’s guess who will be her opponent with Killer Kelly being the most logical name as she was the one facing Melanie in a number one contenders match.
Amale also has been involved in a storyline with Director of Sports Karsten Beck who seemingly has the hots for her, but there also is Levaniel, the “Prince of the Stars”, who seemingly has some love for Amale. I expect some kind of love triangle or angle-heavy conclusion of this storyline over the coming months.
Yuki Ishikawa & Timothy Thatcher vs. Daisuke Ikeda & WALTER (Sunday)
Playing off the previous match, this will be Thatcher’s wXw farewell for the time being as he teams with his mentor against former friend WALTER and Ikeda. This will be gruesome, hard hitting and a strong style battle for the ages, plus probably a very emotional farewell for the man that Oberhausen lost its heart to over the years.
Even more wrestling
A wXwNOW feature event is scheduled for Sunday afternoon which will feature WALTER. Also, Wrestling KULT from Germany runs a morning show on Saturday at 10 AM featuring wrestlers such as Absolute Andy, Tom LaRuffa, Carnage, Rico Bushido, Norman Harras, Julian Pace, and others.
The kickoff to the weekend happened with Inner Circle at the wXw Academy last night featuring a secret lineup. This was a fun show with some very good matches, especially the main event of Yuki Ishikawa & Daisuke Ikeda beating Chris Ridgeway & Daniel Makabe.
Editor’s note: This preview column was submitted before the Dark Order/SCU match was added to the pre-show. Also, because this is a column, this reflects the views of the author.
Improvement comes through change and change is necessary in the pursuit of perfection. Perfection is impossible to achieve, but you get the idea.
The most promising thing about AEW (besides it being extremely non-WWE) is its willingness to make changes if something isn’t working. The Dark Order was floundering as a weird supernatural group, but seems to have found their footing since being presented as an actual cult that actively recruits more members. The Nightmare Collective and happy dentist Britt Baker don’t exist anymore.
Those changes show that AEW is listening to their audience and tailoring the product to what the audience actually wants. This isn’t WWE ignoring their audience screaming about another King Corbin match just to run another King Corbin match. They respect their audience and don’t always pretend to know more than them.
It helps that the guys running AEW seem to truly love professional wrestling. The entire company is a love letter to the aspects of pro wrestling that they grew up with. They love this insane thing so much they started their own company.
With all that effusive praise out of the way, it’s important that I publically and emphatically declare my undying love for NXT. It is the superior in-ring product and doesn’t do anything approaching some of the corniness that AEW has. That corniness can be fun., but a lot of it just isn’t for me. Nothing about the Jurassic Express is remotely appealing to me and Luchasaurus remains the dirt worst.
Anyway, this card looks good with lots of belts and lots of good matches! Let’s run through them!
Jake Hager vs. Dustin Rhodes
This has been a nice little undercard feud. Hager feels like an actual big strong boy and Dustin is doing impossibly good work for a 50-year-old. For comparison’s sake, The Undertaker is 54 years old. They are contemporaries. Imagine Mean Mark attempting a destroyer four years ago and not disintegrating into a million tiny pieces. Bill Goldberg was 52 when he concussed himself BEFORE a match. Whatever well of wrestling excellence the Rhodes family has been drinking from for the past needs to be bottled for every wrestling school in America.
What is there to say about Hager at this point? According to the indisputable cagematch.net, he wrestled four matches in 2019, none on television. The last mainstream exposure he had outside of AEW was getting disqualified from an MMA fight. Short of that, he had an unremarkable run in Lucha Underground that ‘captured’ the world’s attention. I just don’t really know what to make of him. I do know that his role as the heavy of the Inner Circle has played to his strengths: standing around and looking real jacked, baby.
I’d like this story to continue further beyond Saturday. The feud between the Rhodes Family and The Inner Circle still has more meat on the bone, so large Jake goes over here, but not cleanly.
Darby Allin vs. Sammy Guevara
Allin is one of the delightful cases in pro wrestling where if you describe what he is and what he looks like, people probably aren’t going to get it. But once you see him, it is immediately clear that he has it, especially the indescribable that is impossible to define. Once you see it, you know it. I’ve got more texts from non-wrestling fans about Darby than I have just about anything or anyone else. Anytime someone transcends wrestling fandom and makes normal people notice, they are a star.
Speaking of transcending wrestling fandom, Guevara is the opposite of that, aka Entirely Replaceable Indy Wrestler #47 or whatever. There is nothing remarkable or overly special about Guevara. He is perfectly acceptable and extraordinarily average. If Finn Balor was the extraordinary man who does extraordinary things, he is the ordinary man who does slightly above average things. The posterboard gimmick is actually really great though. I wish that was his only method of communication.
I can’t help but think Allin loses here, though. Guevara will get help from The Inner Circle, and anyone that might help Darby (like Cody) are busy with other things. Most of my predictions have the faces going over, so Guevara takes this one by dastardly tactics as Allin can afford the loss.
PAC vs. Orange Cassidy
AEW, please stop adding matches to pay-per-view cards at the last minute when I haven’t had enough time to think about them. This, at least for me, became the match that I am most excited about on the entire card. Is Cassidy actually going to wrestle? Will non-fans understand the appeal? Is he really going to beat PAC? I have questions and hopefully, AEW has answers.
The outcome of this match could show us what AEW has planned for the Juiceman. If he pushes PAC to the limit, or somehow wins, does that start his ascent up the card? Cassidy is a very unique talent, but what’s the ceiling? Does the gimmick have an expiration date? All logic would tell you yes, but AEW is real weird so who actually knows. As good as Cassidy is at what he does, PAC is essentially a perfect wrestler. He should be at the top of the card, not filling it out on late notice. I have no idea, so I’ll say Cassidy wins and adds some more weirdness to AEW.
MJF vs. Cody
Give Cody all the accolades that exist. The man is a chef in Hell’s Kitchen in his apron and a hairnet cooking up some of the best character work done in years in any company. The fundamentals of persuasion are ethos, pathos, and logos. Cody hits all the credibility, emotion, and logic beats here. His hatred is believable because he has made us feel it with his actions and explained it with his words. The man is a master storyteller whose emotion-fueled matches fill us up while most wrestling just feeds us empty calories.
Is it even a hot take to say that Cody has carried this feud? Not to knock the talents of MJF (which are vast), but has he really done anything dramatically different from the “you people stink” stuff that 99% of wrestling heels do? Other than truly living the gimmick, is there anything he has done that has pushed the envelope of what a bad guy in wrestling can do? While Cody is hitting those beats perfectly, Max is:
Saying he is rich and we are all poor
Saying he is handsome and we are all ugly
Saying he has sex with others and we have sex with ourselves (self love is still love!)
That’s the standard heel trifecta. That isn’t to say he’s not great because he has everything a 23-year-old wrestler could ever dream of having. But, let’s not be afraid to try something new. Let’s dream a little bigger, darling.
The heroes in a story don’t go through all these trials and tribulations not to come out on top. It’s kind of wild that the guy who runs the company and books the matches is still this massively popular hero, but here we are. Regardless of what happens here, the careers of these two are linked forever in AEW. Cody gets the win and proves that all the pain was worth it.
AEW Women’s Champion Nyla Rose vs. Kris Statlander
The AEW women’s division is certainly an interestingly booked one. There have been missteps and mistakes throughout, but as I mentioned up top, they deserve some credit for pulling the plug on things that aren’t working. The presumed face of the division, Britt Baker, was extremely not it, so they did a 180 and turned her heel which is working out better than anyone could have possibly imagined.
The whole Nightmare Collective was rushed, sloppy, bad, short-sighted, insert your own bad adjective, so that was mercifully ended. Riho, while being an incredibly popular performer, was never given screen time to develop much of a character to casuals other than “she’s small.” If that was the plan for her usage all along, why was she the first choice to carry the division?
Even this match, which is probably the right one, got here in a weird way that somehow got Big Swole involved for 15 seconds. Don’t needlessly overcomplicate something that’s right in front of you. Take a step back, take a deep breath, and let the talent shine.
Statlander is that talent. She is a shockingly good performer for someone with her level of experience. The handling of her, again, has been an issue. It’s pretty clear that they didn’t expect her to get so popular so quickly which led to the scheduling snafu that prevented her from wrestling Riho when she was originally supposed to. I don’t think anyone could have reasonably assumed she would become a star so fast, even while still needing a fair bit of fine tuning.
This match could be great or it could be two performers slightly exposed on a stage they aren’t fully ready for yet. To that point, Rose’s best matches have been with Riho who could probably carry Jimmy Havoc to a watchable match but probably not. Since Nyla just won the belt, she isn’t losing it here, not even against the galaxy’s greatest alien.
AEW Tag Team Champions Hangman Page and Kenny Omega vs. The Young Bucks
What happens when ego and success meet? Success at the highest level.
The level the Young Bucks have reached rarely comes without a fair bit of ego. You have to think you are the best, the funniest, the smartest. When your life is nothing but a chorus of how great you are, how can you not believe it? That’s where the problems with the Bucks begins. Their success has indeed led them to believe that no one is better and no one is funnier. If you are watching Being The Elite and howling with laughter, I just don’t know what to tell you. That is the corniest of the corny.
The battle royal on the Feb. 19th episode of Dynamite is a perfect example of the Bucks’ problem. Why do Santana and Ortiz, a supremely gifted tag team, need to job out in service of Matt Jackson? What purpose does this serve? To get the Bucks into yet another high profile main event match? Do we really need more storylines about how The Elite are in turmoil? I sure don’t.
In the middle of all this, Hangman Page messed around and became, by far, the most enjoyable member of The Elite and one of the most enjoyable wrestlers in AEW itself. His natural ability was never a question, but it was the ability to connect with fans that don’t wait in line to get their 27th black t-shirt autographed. The current gimmick — a guy who loves to drink and may have a drinking problem — is a serious home run. He has been helped tremendously by spending so much time with our man Ken Omega who, while still being on his bullsh*t, has toned it down since spending more time in the tag division.
I would throw up in my mouth if The Bucks win here. AEW should really lean into the idea of Nick and Matt being entitled a-holes who can’t understand how two guys who never teamed together can all of a sudden beat some of the best tag teams in the world. They kind of started doing that during last week’s episode of Dynamite in the Jim Ross interview segment even if the announcers didn’t sell it that way. I’d really love to see it. I’d hate to see the Bucks leave Chicago with the straps. Page and Omega retain.
AEW World Champion Chris Jericho vs. Jon Moxley
My one issue with this match is that it illustrates the gap between the top wrestlers in AEW and everyone else. I’m not talking the usual upper card, midcard, undercard type stuff, but the guys who are pretty good at this and the guys who are great at this. Mox and Jericho are as good as it gets. They can do it all. They don’t feel out of place in front of a big crowd, they own their characters, and they perform in the ring. In short, they’re polished, finished products.
Sure, the rest of the roster has the chance to get there in due time, but until then, this class disparity is going to continue to exist, putting the pressure of the haves to carry the company until the have nots can improve.
Like most people, I love this, a match that touches on the past of the two performers but doesn’t rely on it, a match that has realistically been built from the moment Mox made his debut in the company. They kept these two apart until it was time to bring them together, making us want something we had already forgotten about. It’s things like this that bring people back for more. Anything that leads to a wrestler wearing an eyepatch in and out of kayfabe is perfect. I’m invested in this and that is all that anyone can ask for in a world title match.
So who leaves Chicago with the big boy belt? Mox is still one of the hottest things in *extremely wrestler voice* this business, but Jericho is still doing the Lord’s work and making the belt feel kinda like a big deal and I have no problem with him keeping it. I just can’t help but think it’s time for Mox to show that he can carry a company like we always knew he could.
If it’s the Russian machine that never breaks, consider NXT Alex Ovechkin. NXT is the indestructible black box in airplanes, the sun in the morning, and the moon at night. It is me falling asleep on the couch at 9:30 after three Miller High Lifes. It is a beautiful constant, and one that is wonderfully consistent.
It’s actually shocking to me that they are losing the ratings “war” with AEW considering just how superior the product is. Week after week, month after month, they continue to spoil the wrestling world with spectacular content. If the TakeOver during Wrestlemania week is considered their best event of the year, then we are in for a treat Sunday because this might be the best card NXT has ever put together in terms of star power.
I’m sure I have said that before in other previews, but that doesn’t make it any less true in the here and now: none of these matches would be out of place as a main event. It’s just that loaded.
The move to a two-hour show on USA has allowed them to do the little things better than they already were. This week’s opening match was a perfect example of that. Hot Rod Strong is both mad online and IRL about Velveteen Dream putting his family on his wrestling gear and wants to fight about it. But Dream doesn’t come out, Bronson Reed does. Reed, who is for sure is not it, came out because the Undisputed Era boys roughed him up last week and he is also mad about that. How many times has someone run around backstage on Raw roughing up the lower card? Those guys never do anything about it, even though they pretend fight for a living. It’s the subversion of expectations that NXT continues to do that puts them at the top of wrestling. They win on the margins and all the time.
The Portland, Oregon, show is going to be a blast and I’m excited to see all these matches live and in living color. Now like we always do at this time, let’s preview the card match by match and try to make sense of yet another NXT TakeOver.
Dakota Kai vs. Tegan Nox street fight
Another TakeOver and another shining example of how good the women’s division of NXT is. File “two female storylines getting shine at TakeOver” under things you absolutely love to see. This is a simple, formulaic, and a by the numbers type of feud: good girl turns on her best friend, gets a new look, and weaponizes a knee brace. Very regular, very standard stuff. NXT sure loves a threatening knee brace, huh?
The cool off of Kai has been fascinating. She was the story coming out of War Games and now, room temperature water. It is legitimately puzzling. The first thing she did after War Games was…lose to Mia Yim? What in the world? Then she went away for a bit, came back to eliminate Nox from a battle royal, and then…lose to her in, like, four minutes on TV? Something seriously weird is going on with all this.
Listen to the reaction when she came out this week and listen to the reaction when Nox came after her. This should be a blood feud that riles the crowd up and not one that gets mild applause. Maybe a street fight will heat things back up but, man, this could have been so, so much more.
Usually the babyface wins these types of matches, but I’d really hate for that to be the case here. There is still plenty more story to tell, but how can that story be told if Kai loses? She’d look like a chump (hey) and nothing is worse than a chump. The captain of #teamkick will get a much needed win in this one.
Finn Bálor vs. Johnny Gargano
Bálor has reached an incomprehensible level of cool in a way Gargano can only dream of. I can’t even imagine how exhausting it must be to be as cool and handsome as Finn. While Gargano lives his best life as an adult Disney weirdo, Finn is the hottest thing going today. One is a leather jacket wearing, Twitter riler upper rock star and the other is a leg slapping, Marvel-loving man child. Imagine a world where horny wrestling Twitter posts a picture of Johnny like they do whenever Finn debuts new, umm, ‘gear’? Never going to happen. But a funny thing happens when you pair up two polar opposites, they bring out the best in each other.
This is a feud they can both sink their teeth into. Gargano has done the best mic work of his career during this, and Finn just keeps sinking deeper and deeper into The Prince persona. My only issue, and it’s a small one, is that he feels too big for NXT. He was the one who ushered in the modern era of NXT, was the first Universal Champion, and might still be a superpowered demon. He’s well-established as a god tier level character in NXT, so the right opponent matters more with him than anyone else. As good as Ilja Dragunov is, there was no way he was ever beating Finn at Worlds Collide. But Johnny Wrestling? Johnny TakeOver? Mr. NXT? Now that’s a dude I believe can go toe-to-toe with The Prince and hold his own.
I’m really excited to see what Gargano’s performance looks like in a match that isn’t the main event and doesn’t last 30+ minutes. The winner of this match is probably positioned for a shot at the NXT championship, one that will most likely happen WrestleMania weekend. Does Finn’s return to NXT mean another run with the belt, but this time as a bad guy? Or, are we finally heading for the Gargano-Ciampa match that was always supposed to main event the Wrestlemania weekend TakeOver? I think Finn wins here, and I’m all sorts of excited to find out if I’m right.
NXT North American Champion Keith Lee vs. Dominik Dijakovic
Almost thirteen feet of combined height and pushing a combined 600 pounds, these two have done this before and they’ll do it again and again and again.
From AAW to Beyond Wrestling to Evolve to PWG and now NXT, they have torn it down. If there was ever an NXT match that would make Vince McMahon put down the protein bars and pay attention, it’s this. If he can’t manage to get up for this, he should just give the XFL his full attention (maybe he should do that anyway?). It’s cool to see NXT have some legit beefy boys mixed in with all of the 5’9: dudes with 6% body fat.
While this is probably going to lead the show in “This is awesome” chants, I can’t help but wonder if Lee is, no pun intended, too big for this. He was the star of Survivor Series and got the Roman Reigns rub. He was in the ring with Brock Lesnar during the Royal Rumble. With all apologies to Tommaso Ciampa, this is his moment. His star is starting to outshine the small, safe, solar system at Full Sail, and it’s only a matter of time before he goes supernova. Truly, NXT should not be planning long term booking around him because he won’t be around long term.
I recognize this does a bit of a disservice to Dijak, who is good in his own right and keeps on improving, but this is as clear a class disparity as there is. One could be the biggest thing in the company and the other is just a big thing. The biggest thing retains his belt here and proves that his ceiling matches his nickname, Limitless.
NXT Tag Team Champions The Undisputed Era (Bobby Fish and Kyle O’Reilly) vs. The BroserWeights (Matt Riddle and Pete Dunne)
Asking me to pick my favorite person in this match is like asking someone to pick their favorite part of the sky. Is it the funny Canadian that always makes you laugh? Is it his partner who also might be your friend’s very attractive stepdad? Maybe it’s the angry British short king with a bear tattoo on his kneecap? Oh I know! It’s the impossibly handsome stoner who wears flippy floppies everywhere and doesn’t care about anything except cracking you in the face. There’s a million ways to get it — choose one.
This is the third time in the five years of the Dusty Cup that it was won by an ‘unofficial’ tag team. Samoa Joe and Finn Balor started the trend, Ricochet and Aleister Black were a particularly egregious example of just putting two dudes together, and now, we get the Broserweights. Hey, at least they have a team name. I know that these are two of the best guys on the roster so of course they are going to win, but it’s a weird way to put over two guys that need no help getting there. Couldn’t a team unfamiliar to most of NXT like the Grizzled Young Veterans have used the rub a bit more? Even Imperium, really. But the real crime is that there wasn’t more of the Time Splitters. Give me more of a love that pure.
Will this match begin the end of the Undisputed Era’s time with the gold? Roderick Strong already dropped the North American Championship to Keith Lee and Adam Cole could easily lose the title to Ciampa. Will Fish and O’Reilly do the same? I think that is a future that isn’t too far off, but Portland isn’t the place for new title holders up and down the card. Besides, it’s only a matter of time before Dunne’s appetite for fingers grows to be more than he can control and turns on our precious Matthew. It would be some seriously great storytelling if Dunne turned on Riddle like Roddy did to him during the 2018 Dusty Cup, wouldn’t it? The Era boys retain…for now.
NXT Champion Rhea Ripley vs. Bianca Belair
Along with Keith Lee, these are the two performers with the most upside in the entire company. The only limits are the ones that bound the company itself. The main event of Wrestlemania is in play for both of these women, and if there was a higher peak to reach, that would be in play as well. Anything is possible for these two, and everything is even more likely.
Belair is such a sure thing and all the adjectives in my thesaurus don’t do her justice. It’s all there and I can’t help but wonder why she hasn’t achieved more already. Every time it seems like the rocket on her back is set to take off, there has been a failure to launch. Even now, she feels secondary to the Ripley/Charlotte Flair match that is a Wrestlemania inevitability. But she can overcome that. What will we remember about the segment with her, Rhea, and Charlotte from NXT two weeks ago? Will we remember the standard talking points that make up 90% of wrestling promos? No. Will we remember Charlotte getting laid out by the two NXT women? Possibly. Will we remember Bianca’s incredible presence and even better reactions to Charlotte’s words? Absolutely. Because when you are the brightest light in the sky, you are all anyone can look at.
I’d love nothing more than for Bianca to boat race Rhea and face Charlotte at Mania. Unfortunately, it’s just not her time, it’s Ripley’s. Her NXT career has been an absolute masterclass in how to turn a lump of coal into a perfect diamond. She’s been groomed for this from the start, and she’s proving that no moment is too big for her. The fact that she’s seen as a worthy opponent for Charlotte, at age freakin’ 23 no less, doesn’t feel out of place at all. She’s going over in Portland, and hopefully over at Wrestlemania, too.
NXT Champion Adam Cole vs. Tommaso Ciampa
There’s been a lot of praise for a lot of people in this column and that’s not going to stop when it comes to the main event. Do Cole and Ciampa have Wrestlemania main event ceilings like Lee, Belair, Ripley, and Balor do? Maybe not (feel free to disagree with this!) and at least not as long as Vince McMahon is still running the show. What these two are, though, are the two most well-rounded performers in NXT. When it comes to knowing their characters, selling a match, in-ring acumen and experience, mic skills, and everything else, these two have it all. I love both of them so much.
Cole was an NXT champion the second he signed with WWE. Ciampa was, at best, an afterthought. One was a replacement in the Cruiserweight Classic, the other debuted on and closed the show of a TakeOver. Cole was built for this, but Ciampa needs this. They both mean so much to NXT. Both of them wound up at the same place, but their journeys could not have been more different. I know Gargano is kind of like Ciampa’s forever rival, but really it should be Cole. It’s the man who walked into NXT and succeeded against someone who was never even supposed to be here.
It’s the greatest NXT champion that ever lived vs. the man who never lost the belt. Would the so-called “greatest champ” even exist if Ciampa never got hurt? Probably, if only because Cole as champ was always an inevitability. Does the Undisputed Era’s golden dynasty start if Ciampa has a normal neck? We will never get the answers to those questions, but Sunday does give NXT a chance to reset Ciampa’s title run and do it the way they wanted to.
The story tells itself. My initial thoughts had me thinking Cole would retain the belt and move on to face Bálor. Then I watched this week’s NXT and Ciampa’s incredible promo changed my mind. TakeOver Portland ends with Ciampa regaining what he never lost, Goldie.
The previous iterations of Worlds Collide really haven’t done it for me, and I’d venture to guess they haven’t done much for most people. Unless the card is incredible (think prime era PWG), it’s hard to get excited about something with little stakes and less of a story. This version, however, is different. There are some stakes and there has been at least some loose builds towards the matches.
Plus, this is kind of like a prime era PWG card. Plus, plus there are two titles on the line. Plus, plus, it’s been awhile since I typed out like a thousand words about wrestling into a Google doc. So there it is, and here we are. Let’s run through this tasty treat of a Worlds Collide card.
NXT Cruiserweight Champion Angel Garza vs. Travis Banks vs. Jordan Devlin vs. Isaiah ‘Swerve’ Scott in a fatal four-way
If this goes on first, it is going to be hard to beat. All four can absolutely go and it’s an interesting blend of styles. Banks and Devlin bring a well-defined super junior style that should mesh well with Swerve’s outrageous smoothness and Garza’s lucha background. One of the issues with Worlds Collide is that the domestic version of NXT is largely considered superior to its UK counterpart. This creates a fairly defined pecking order that makes it hard to find a place where the UK folks can come out on top. This match has a pretty clear pecking order of:
Garza
Swerve
Devlin
Banks
Of course, your mileage may vary with that ranking, but by all means, please get your own wrestling column if you’d like to present your personal ranks (for the record, my personal ranking of them is Swerve, Devlin, Garza, Banks but all of them are great!).
This is far too early for Garza to drop the belt (maybe Lio Rush gets involved?), so look for him to retain in a wildly entertaining sprint.
Ilja Dragunov vs. Finn Bálor
This might be the first exposure some people are going to have to Dragunov which is totally fine and also totally unfortunate. My man goes full tilt full time, and has such a unique style and vibe. He’s very much in the Kota Ibushi-led group of “crazy dudes who might die in the ring and no one would be surprised”. He’s frantic. The UNBESIEGBAR (rough translation: invincible) stuff isn’t a gimmick. He lives it. He believes it. He wrestles with the urgency of someone desperate to feel something, to feel anything, and it’s a treat.
He also gets to take on the fully realized version of Balor. His best match in WWE was against Jordan Devlin at NXT UK TakeOver: Blackpool and I’m hoping going against another NXT UK bro brings out the best in him yet again. I’m interested to see what the endgame is for Finn in his NXT return. Is he back for the long haul? Or, is he here for a good time, not a long time, and just long enough to get some reps as The Prince.
There’s just no way Balor loses this. He’s too big and too important. But, he will sure let Ilja get his offense in, and both should come out of this looking good as hell.
NXT Champion Rhea Ripley vs. Toni Storm
The growth of Ripley from a green NXT UK champion to what she is now is staggering. She owns her character and demands your attention and commands the screen. What a testament to her talent, and the developmental system. Her ascent to the top was as well executed as it gets, so shout-out to her for being great, and shout-out to NXT for recognizing an absolute supernova and pulling the trigger on her.
If Ripley is a supernova, what does that make Storm? Probably a star, right? Where Ripley had to grow into her role as a top star in the company, Storm has quietly been there since she started with NXT. She was a semi-finalist in the first Mae Young Classic and won the damn thing the following year. Her being a top level performer isn’t a secret, so it’s surprising she hasn’t made more noise stateside.
This is a nice revisiting of the first major women’s program in NXT UK. Ripley beat Storm to become the first champ, and Storm took the title from Ripley. They have done some good acknowledgment of that and it’s worth wondering if this is a reintroduction of Storm to the larger NXT domestic audience. This is Rhea’s first title defense and, like with the Cruiserweight title match, there is just no way they take the belt off of her so soon.
#DIY (Tommaso Ciampa & Johnny Gargano) vs. Moustache Mountain (Tyler Bate & Trent Seven)
This is a match that wouldn’t be out of place at the top of one of those classic PWG cards I mentioned earlier. MM is the perfect idea of a tag team: the preternaturally gifted Tyler Bate and his relatable, handsome dad with perfect hair. They are two pure white meat baby faces who are as good as it gets.
Also as good as it gets? #DIY (other than the forever terrible name). British Strong Style is synonymous with NXT UK much like Gargano and Ciampa are with the domestic brand. One team helped establish a new brand and the other elevated one to a different level.
DIY might not be the perfect idea of a tag team. Even though they have had some incredible matches as a team, they still feel like two singles competitors who just happen to be teaming up. There is a difference between a team and ‘A Team’ and this match illustrates that. Even though they aren’t one functioning organism like MM, Johnny and Tommy are two great tastes that go great together.
NXT domestic has taught us that Gargano and Ciampa are superpowered final bosses who wrestle street fights, 2 out of 3 falls matches, Ironman matches, or whatever. Maybe their weakness is a regular tag team match after such a long layoff? Nah, they just got new merch. DIY wins in what I think will be the match of the night.
Imperium (WALTER, Alexander Wolfe, Fabian Aichner & Marcel Barthel) vs. Undisputed Era (NXT Champion Adam Cole, Roderick Strong, NXT Tag Team Champions Bobby Fish & Kyle O’Reilly)
It would be a fundamental failure if I did not include a link to the chop that ended Adam Cole’s life on Wednesday night. I know WALTER’s thing is the big boy chops, and I’ve seen just about all of them, but man alive, was that a horrifying sound. A full flip bump for a chop seems like a Dolph Ziggler level of oversell… but it really wasn’t.
This brings us to the showdown between the beautiful, tiny, wonderful, UE boys and their faction counterparts from across the pond; the not as beautiful, certainly not as tiny, and slightly less wonderful Imperium. All eight of these guys have worked at the highest level of every promotion they’ve been in, so this should be another well put together multi-man match.
Still, for some reason, I can’t find myself getting worked into a lather for this one. I know it’s going to be good, and I know these are the two biggest factions on either side, but here I am doing the Pete Dunne shrug whenever I think about this.
I could see this match being a clean Imperium win. NXT has been trying to balance the build toward Worlds Collide with the build towards TakeOver: Portland, and Imperium winning would continue the story of the Undisputed Era’s golden prophecy coming to an end. Let’s say Impermium closes the show standing tall; the mat is sacred, after all.
Mike DellaCamera is on a never ending hunt for some leftovers. If you have any, let him know here
Now that 2019 is officially a wrap, let’s look back at what were the top ten most-read non-event results stories on this here website. In terms of actual news value, these weren’t necessarily the most important but these were the ones that got the most views for us.
A day before the event, WWE announced that Natalya and Lacey Evans would have the honor of the first women’s match in the country at Crown Jewel, their fourth show there. A bit further down the list, we’ll relive part of the journey to get here.
I got to admit, this being in our top 10 surprised me a lot. I never saw an episode of the show, nor did I hear anyone really talking about it. Nevertheless, our readers were interested in what was going on with the WWE god himself.
Less than a week after the sad death of former WWE wrestler Ashley Massaro, WWE legal foe Konstantine Kyros released an affadavit that included a claim she was sexually assaulted during a 2007 WWE tour of Kuwait. WWE released a statement both denying it and discrediting Kyros.
One of the biggest stories of the year has been the “Wednesday Night Wars” between AEW and NXT. This was a fairly big missile fired by WWE as NXT got a two-hour primetime slot on USA opposite their new competition and we learned about the premiere date: two weeks before the launch of Dynamite.
Anytime Vinny Mac gets upset, it’s newsworthy. In late-July, McMahon decided to rewrite a SmackDown episode and changed the lineup several times before settling on then-WWE Champion Kofi Kingston vs. U.S. Champion AJ Styles in a non-title champ vs. champ match. Why the urgency with shaking things up a few months before the move to Fox? Who knows.
Told you we’d get back here. In June, WWE had hoped to have Bliss vs. Natalya as the first-ever women’s match in Saudi history at Super ShowDown, but the government decided to not allow that. As you can expect, this got fans pretty riled up but it helped pave the way for the aforementioned Natalya-Evans match at Crown Jewel.
This was our top story by nearly double what Bliss-Natalya did. The two did a match in Manchester, England, which surprised some people who thought DoN was the first time they would see PAC and Page do their thing.
From Dave Meltzer at the time: The official word from AEW is that there were creative differences regarding the match and PAC won’t be on Saturday’s show. With PAC’s regular matches in the U.K., it’s known that because he takes his status as world champion with Dragon Gate seriously, he has not agreed to any losses since winning the Open the Dream Gate title and to protect that has done 30:00 draws with Zack Sabre Jr. and Will Ospreay. On the flip side, AEW wants to present a sports-like atmosphere and had their own direction for what they wanted.”
Honorable Mentions
I did want to throw out a few honorable mentions that barely fell outside the top 10, especially the most surprising one to me. For some reason, Rhyno’s appearance at Impact Wrestling’s Slammiversary show was very, very interesting to our readers. I’ll save the “Did our post outdraw their PPV buys?” joke, but feel free to use that at your next party.
Each year, there are multiple classes brought in to the WWE Performance Center with the recruits ranging from independent stars to international athletes who are fresh to the genre. Everybody comes in with opportunity and some take a few years to truly find themselves.
You can go back in history and see that for every generational talent with the pedigree and the lineage to succeed, there’s also the person who slowly kept improving and found their personality on the big stage.
2020 is a major year in terms of development as NXT wants to constantly achieve new heights as a worldwide brand while keeping the Florida system as a long term focus with the largest PC roster in history and even more coming in all the time.
As 2019 is a wrap, let’s look to the future and showcase who to watch in 2020.
Austin Theory
As can’t miss a WWE superstar as I have ever seen, Theory is the epitome of the current system as he was signed to NXT in his third year as a pro after being trained by AR Fox at the WWA4 school while still holding the EVOLVE championship. At the age of 22, Theory has already made his WWE Network debut on the EVOLVE 10th anniversary special and just snuck in his NXT TV debut on the Christmas episode as he faced Roderick Strong for the North American Championship. He is already showing what he can do on Florida live events and is sure to become a fixture on TV going forward.
Daniel Vidot
After nearly a decade in professional rugby, the intensity of “The Samoan Ghost” came to the WWE Performance Center in 2018 and by 2019, he was already having Florida tour matches. All the intagibles and attributes are there. We saw glimpses of what Vidot could do as he faced off with veterans and fellow prospects alike. 2020 could be a major step for this intriguing talent.
Denzel DeJournette
The NCAA wrestling standout joined the long list of top tier college grapplers who made the transition to the pro game. Officially signing with WWE halfway through 2018 and working in the Performance Center, Denzel was consistenlty having Florida loop matches all through 2019. Unlike most shooters, he has all the charm in the world with a center of attention charisma that he used as a party starter in his earlier matches. Currently, he’s a more focused stoic competitor who is here to win.
Reina Gonzalez
Even with matches in both Mae Young Classics, we still haven’t seen Gonzalez truly break through as the NXT TV star that she is poised to be in 2020. This past year, it seemed like she delivered when being tested in EVOLVE matches and closed out Jacksonville, Florida’s all-women show against NXT women’s champion Shayna Baszler. The Texas strong woman with a mean lariat is definitely one to watch.
Samantha De Martin
The 23-year-old formerly known as Indi Hartwell has had an incredibly fast track to NXT after breaking into the Australian independent scene just two years ago. The concentrated experience from facing top names all over the world including Madison Eagles, Tessa Blanchard, and LuFisto has lead De Martin to where she is today. The impressive one now finds herself ready to face off against one of the best female rosters in NXT history. There’s no limit to what she is capable of and we are fortunate enough to be here to witness this journey.
The nine matches that scored above five stars is up three up from 2018 and up five from 2017.
In chronological order, here’s what made the list including some notes from the corresponding Wrestling Observer Newsletter:
Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Kenny Omega | New Japan Wrestle Kingdom 13 | *****3/4
January 4, 2019
“Live I went *****½, and most of the feedback was in that range (mostly *****1/4 to ******) but I need to be able to watch it without interruption to give a fair rating. In the building, this was maybe the best live match I ever saw. I thought it was better than the Toyota vs. Yamada hair match, but it didn’t have the screaming girls heat. It was not as emotional as the famous Tsuruta vs. Misawa match, but it was a much better worked match. It was well above any Flair-Steamboat and I saw two of the best Flair-Steamboats in history.
Because of the attention to detail, the match was significantly better on second viewing, particularly since everything built to the end result. It was a great overall presentation in an arena where that is expected, and where the succession and memories of matches are such that the big matches can’t just rely on your greatest moves formula.”
Adam Cole vs. Johnny Gargano (2/3 falls) | NXT TakeOver: Brooklyn | *****1/2
April 5, 2019
“They had one of the greatest crowds for a big show in WWE major show history, ranking with the 1997 Calgary PPV and some of the Chicago shows. The show looked great going in on paper and every match lived up to, or significantly exceeded expectations, notably the Johnny Gargano win of the vacant NXT title over Adam Cole, which I’d call the greatest match in WWE history.
What was interesting about this match was it was all about the peak. While watching the match, it just felt like very good match after the first two falls. But it just exploded in the third fall. It was helped by the great crowd. “
Adam Cole vs. Johnny Gargano | NXT TakeOver XXV | *****1/4
June 1, 2019
“Adam Cole won the NXT title in the main event over Johnny Gargano in a match that I’d consider one of the greatest matches in WWE history. On the positive, Gargano could end up with more five-star matches than everyone else in WWE combined historically as long as he remains in the main event position here. The downside is that they had promoted the NXT title situation around Gargano’s long quest for the title, which he finally won at the last Takeover in Brooklyn. There’s nothing worse for a babyface to do the long chase, win, and then lose right away.
The two followed their two of three fall match with a one fall match that went 31:45, ending with Cole winning clean. The first time I heard about Cole and the NXT title was years ago, when he was in ROH and WWE wanted to bring him in but he still had a long time left on his ROH deal. That led to the Sinclair tampering charges which saw everyone from ROH have to wait until long after their contracts expired before WWE would make a solid contract offer. But that period ended.
Gargano is easily on the best run of matches of anyone in WWE history. Gargano has now had 14 Takeover matches, with the last nine being singles matches. He’s averaged 4.83 stars per singles match. He’s been voted the best match on seven of the last eight Takeover shows, and best match on a Takeover show is not like best match on a WWE PPV show, since the standard is so much higher.”
Shingo Takagi vs. Will Ospreay | New Japan Best of the Super Juniors | *****3/4
June 5, 2019
“This year’s Best of the Super Juniors tournament, besides generally considered the greatest ever, was built from the start on the idea of Ospreay and Shingo Takagi meeting in the finals. Takagi was pushed as unbeatable, not having lost a fall in New Japan since signing in October. He went 9-0, beating Taiji Ishimori in the deciding match on 5/31 in Ehime.
Even though Takagi is Japanese, the story of the tournament was about Ospreay as the come-from-behind guy trying to be the dragon-slayer. Takagi was positioned as the unbeatable Dragon. To say they had a great match does this a disservice. Ospreay is just a different level. And his promos in their own way are completely compelling.”
Okada vs. Will Ospreay | New Japan G1 Climax | *****3/4
July 20, 2019
“I’d go so far as to say had Ospreay beat Okada, and it was that night where when watching it felt special and the time to do it, it would have been the best match of the year. With Okada winning and not having what would have been this incredible emotional ending, it simply challenged for the top spot. This was an all-time classic match.”
Shingo Takagi vs. Tomohiro Ishii | New Japan G1 Climax | *****1/2
August 8, 2019
“To show how much the audience knows who is really good and who isn’t, they were up for this when it started like it was an Okada vs. Tanahashi match with a guy who is 4-3 and another who is 2-5. Just the most brutal hard hitting match you’ll see. It was incredible and by the latter stages, you were just in awe of both guys. Kevin Kelly screamed how these two aren’t human. On the flip side, this match was everything Tanahashi used to warn against. When a match is built on just how hard you can hit each other (more or less in safe places but still) and stand up to it and take it, it becomes a point of no return. Then again, a lot of modern top level pro wrestling is past the point of no return to the previous generation.
But Ishii walking to the ring looks like his head may be ready to fall off his shoulders, and then he comes out and does another performance like this? And he’s 43, so the argument that this may shorten his career falls apart because few guys in history have been as good as he is at this age and many are done being effective, plus he’s 5-foot-4 and has developed a style where everyone thinks he’s a powerhouse and nobody ever says he’s too small.”
Jay White vs. Kota Ibushi | New Japan G1 Climax | *****1/2
August 12, 2019
“Kota Ibushi defeated Jay White in one of the best G-1 Classic finals in history on 8/12 at Budokan Hall, ending what is largely conceded to be the greatest tournament in pro wrestling history. The finale was the perfect ending of a five week journey. Ibushi had established himself as the ultimate face, and White, with his entourage, as the worst kind of heels.”
Walter vs. Tyler Bate | NXT UK TakeOver | *****1/4
August 31, 2019
“The 8/31 NXT U.K. Takeover show featured one of the best matches in company history with Walter retaining the NXT title in the main event over Tyler Bate. It was a classic big-man, little-man match, but telling the story that the little man has enormous strength. Of course from a logic standpoint it’s backwards in the sense his attempts at using strength failed early, and then his back was worked on, but they worked late. But that’s pro wrestling babyface psychology to elicit pops. The two went 42:11 before Walter got the pin with a running clothesline.”
The Young Bucks vs. The Lucha Bros (ladder match) | AEW All Out | *****1/4
August 31, 2019
“The show featured arguably the best ladder match in history, a series of car crashes where Pentagon Jr. & Fenix retained the AAA tag titles over The Young Bucks.
Fenix and Nick were climbing and Matt had Pentagon in a tombstone position for a Meltzer driver but it was broken up. Nick was climbing, Pentagon shoved him off the ladder, Nick caught his foot on the top rope, tripped a little and went face first into two tables on the floor. That was not planned to go that way and he was lucky it was his forehead that hit the tables first, but that was the one spot that looked the most dangerous. Matt unmasked Pentagon. Fans booed that. Matt was about to get the belt when Pentagon, while covering his face, tipped the ladder over and Matt took a scary bump. They used a package piledriver by Pentagon with Fenix’s double foot stomp off the top rope spike, the zero fear, on Matt outside the ring onto a ladder bridging the apron and barricade. With both Bucks done, Fenix & Pentagon climbed up to get the belts to win.”
12 matches earned Dave Meltzer’s five star rating in 2019, dominated by (you guessed it) New Japan Pro Wrestling.
In chronological order, here’s what made the list including some notes from the corresponding Wrestling Observer Newsletter. We’ll focus on the nine matches that cleared the five star rating in another post.
Okada vs. SANADA | New Japan Cup Finals
March 24, 2019
“Kazuchika Okada captured the 2019 New Japan Cup and as expected, will headline Madison Square Garden on 4/6 and challenge Jay White for the IWGP heavyweight title. Okada won the biggest and best New Japan Cup tournament in history, and also had what was voted the two best matches of the tournament in his semifinal and final match. Okada scored consecutive wins over Michael Elgin, Mikey Nicholls, Will Ospreay, Tomohiro Ishii and Seiya Sanada to win the 32-man tournament for the second time in his career. He had previously won the 2013 tournament, in its former 16-man form, with wins over Lance Archer, Karl Anderson, Toru Yano and Hirooki Goto.
This match was a classic and fantastic climax to the tournament, which wasn’t easy since the semifinals were so great and the every round had great matches.”
Will Ospreay vs. Bandido | New Japan Super Juniors Tournament
May 23, 2019
“To me, this was the match of the tournament so far. It was even better than their New York match, and that was, to me, the match of Mania weekend. The big pop was when Bandido finally got his 21 plex on Ospreay, he landed on his feet and hit a Spanish fly.”
Dustin Rhodes vs. Cody | AEW Double or Nothing
May 25, 2019
“The match was probably the most emotional match in North America since maybe the Atlantis vs. Ultimo Guerrero mask match at the 2014 CMLL anniversary show. Blood is very much a debatable issue today. Blading, largely removed from major promotions today as an anachronism of the past, did work big for this audience and is still effective when used judiciously. I’m not a fan of it, but when not overdone it can be effective in getting matches and certain storylines over.
The audience was crying multiple times during the match. Even though Cody was the spiritual leader, his working heel style worked for the match because for it to work, Dustin had to be the sympathetic character. Cody won, but it wasn’t over. Dustin started taking off one of his boots while a loud “Thank you Dustin” chant started. Cody, who had left, returned, and told him that he doesn’t get to retire now, and that a long time back he had signed an open contract for a tag team match in Jacksonville against The Young Bucks. Cody then said, “I don’t need a partner, I don’t need a friend, I need my older brother.” That was it. The whole building was in tears in a way that may happen every few years in Mexico, on occasion in Japan, but hasn’t happened in the U.S. for a match in decades. When it was over, I thought the show should have ended, because nothing could top that.”
Dragon Lee vs. Will Ospreay | New Japan Dominion
June 9, 2019
“Ospreay beat Lee to follow his Super Juniors tournament win with an IWGP jr. title win, clearly making him the star of the division. This was one of the best matches of the year. But they had an absolutely insane spot where Ospreay was sitting on the barricade when Lee hit him with a tope and both went flying over the announcers table, talking former wrestler Milano Collection A.T out with them. Because of the set up, that was incredibly dangerous as well.
Not only has Ospreay been the best performer in the world for the past several weeks, but New Japan is presenting him as a landmark junior heavyweight, breaking Takagi’s streak, winning the title as well as being a contender for every heavyweight.”
Kota Ibushi vs. Will Ospreay | New Japan G1 Climax
July 18, 2019
“The story here is both were injured legit. So from a crazy athletic standpoint, it was not as good as their Tokyo Dome match, but for drama and story telling it was much better.”
Jon Moxley vs. Tomohiro Ishii | New Japan G1 Climax
July 19, 2019
“I think this was the first time I ever saw a match where at the 17 second mark I already felt it was going to be a **** match”.
Black Taurus/Laredo Kid/Puma King vs. Bandido/Flamita/Rey Horus | PWG 16th Anniversary Show
July 26, 2019
“The 7/26 show still drew a sellout crowd of more than 600 fans and featured an incredible match that some were talking was the best in the history of the company with Bandido & Flamita & Rey Horus beating Laredo Kid & Black Taurus & Puma King. I wouldn’t go quite that far, but would say it was the best PWG match I’ve seen since The Young Bucks & Adam Cole vs. Will Ospreay & Matt Sydal & Ricochet many years back, and would be among the best U.S. bouts of the past decade. This was nothing but big moves like futuristic Lucha Libre. Tons of dives and moves that nobody had ever seen before.”
Okada vs. SANADA | New Japan G1 Climax
August 3, 2019
“This broke the record-setting G-1 unbeaten streak of 13 matches dating back to last year. It was an incredible match that, because of the timing of the pinfall and the drama of using the time, made a great match classic. The emotion of Sanada beating Okada when everyone was convinced they were going to a draw was evident as they showed the fans in the front row and women all had tears in their eyes. This was the best show so far in G-1 and one of the best shows of the year.”
Shingo Tagaki vs. Tetsuya Naito | New Japan G1 Climax
August 4, 2019
“This match was so physical. The idea was to tease going the 30:00 but at no point was this telegraphed or did they slow down to pace or stall for a long match. Naito used a brainbuster but Takagi came back with a sick lariat. He went for last of the dragon, but Naito countered with a Canadian Destroyer and the running destino for a near fall. Naito got the pin with Destino and afterwards praised Takagi and said that some time we have to do this again.”
Kazuchika Okada vs. Kota Ibushi | New Japan G1 Climax
August 10, 2019
“Then, in what was the spot of the tournament, Ibushi ran in with the Bom Ba Ye and out of nowhere, Okada dropkicked him. Okada escaped from the kamigoye and used the same cradle he used to beat Jericho and Omega, but Ibushi kicked out. Ibushi got the pin after two Kamagoyes.”
Bandido vs. Dragon Lee | PWG BOLA Night 2
September 22, 2019
“Having been in the same spot nearly 31 years earlier for the famous Flair-Steamboat match in Chicago, where, at the finish, everyone around us proclaimed it as the greatest match they had ever seen, when this was over, my reaction was, it was better than Flair-Steamboat in every way except the historical aspect of seeing a “real” world title change in an era when that meant something.
This was about as good of a 12:00 match as you could possibly see. It had super wrestling, super flying, insane spots, two super charismatic guys, and a crowd going nuts. I’d call it the best singles match I’ve seen since going to PWG and aside from the Young Bucks & Adam Cole vs. Will Ospreay & Ricochet & Matt Sydal match a few years back, and maybe the six-man tag this summer, one of the three best overall.”
David Starr vs. Jordan Devlin | OTT
October 26, 2019
“Between the fantastic video building the match where Starr champions the independent scene against Devlin having signed with WWE, and Devlin taunting back saying that Starr has attended multiple WWE tryouts and only has this attitude because WWE won’t take him. The heat was some of the most amazing you’ll ever see, which isn’t unusual in that building. It was like a cross between PWG with the brutality of one of the A-Kid classics in Spain.
I’d go ***** for this one and I think it’s the rare kind of a match that will appeal to every kind of fan except the ones who need great production values or they won’t accept it. But it felt like a match that viewed live would be one of those matches that you would never forgot that you were at. It would be better knowing the story because it was a story match. But it was so good with the fight feel that you would love the match not knowing the background, like the pro wrestling version of Corrales/Castillo (one of the great boxing fights ever which was one of those fights that even people who didn’t know either fighter ended up in awe of) or Zombie-Leonard Garcia in MMA. The crowd was molten.”
2019 proved to be a monumental year in NXT history, one that saw TV tapings come to an end in favor of going two hours live weekly on USA. The exposure didn’t stop as major talents both appeared, and were featured, on main roster programming, and even won the brand supremacy battle at Survivor Series.
With all this important content and the consistently great TakeOver events, you would think the NXT Florida loop would have suffered. However, that definitely wasn’t the case. In fact, it opened more doors for fresh talent to find themselves and connect with the focus group level audiences of these small towns across the state. I was fortunate enough to attend a personal-record 61 live events this year and these are a few unique match ups that stood out.
The Women
Io Shirai vs. Deonna Purrazzo | Lakeland, FL | April 18
In what feels like another world ago, Shirai was still wearing her Stardom-inspired red gear with entrance mask for this one. The ring general Purrazzo was able to hold her own with Io and this one showcased two of the best at what they do.
Kay Lee Ray vs. Tegan Nox | Sebring, FL | August 16
Nox had just returned from her injury and was immediately tested by a longtime foe. They had an all-out battle that I could only imagine was to help Nox gain confidence. She still has it and this match-up is one they will definitely come back to someday on a larger stage.
Mia Yim vs. Io Shirai | Daytona Beach, FL | September 19
As we saw later in the year with this match making TV, these two have no fear and will probably be rivals for as long as they are in WWE.
Rhea Ripley/Mia Yim/Candice LeRae vs. Dakota Kai/Jessamyn Duke/Marina Shafir | Jacksonville, FL | December 5
This was the key match of the historic all women’s live event this December. As I wrote at the time it happened, this felt like something special. Every talent in this match has a path that I am sure will take them to heights we haven’t seen yet. This also showed the potential for Ripley vs. Kai long term in NXT.
The Men
Matthew Riddle vs. Punishment Martinez | Ft. Pierce, FL | January 11
This match was as great as you could imagine and will someday find its way to TV. On this night, what ended up all over the Internet was the outrage over the first ever NXT Live destroyer.
The Velveteen Dream vs. Matthew Riddle | Sanford, FL | March 21
This was possibly the hottest crowd we ever had for an NXT Live main event as it was the preview for their TakeOver match and some would even say it was better. The pacing was faster and the crowd was completely into this match at a level you would expect from TV. We can only hope these two can meet again someday to top their previous matches.
The Velveteen Dream vs. Roderick Strong | Orlando, FL | June 15
This was arguably the best of their NXT Live series this year as these two main evented all over the state. I enjoyed this one the most of all that I was fortunate enough to see. Roddy was a force on the loop this year with countless main events and great matches with up-and-ccoming talents.
Adam Cole vs. Bronson Reed | Tampa, FL | August 24
The undisputed champion blessed Tampa with a main event match worthy of TV and truly showcased what Reed could do.
KUSHIDA vs. Roderick Strong | Gainesville, FL | September 7
This was as good as it gets in the ring, the main event of a Saturday show after the crew worked their entire loop schedule. Rather than just have a match, these two had a TakeOver-worthy match in front of a few hundred people in Gainesville. This match kept elevating as neither would quit. By the end, the crowd was on fire. These two are pro’s pros and there’s no greater compliment from a talent to the fanbase than effort. It doesn’t matter if it’s 200, 2000, or 20,000. The people who show up are your audience.
Mens Tag Team
Adam Cole and Bobby Fish vs. Angelo Dawkins and Montez Ford | Sanford, FL | February 9
The least experienced combination of The Undisputed Era was in action against The Street Profits and it ended up being magic. The Sanford crowd enhanced the action and the men kept topping each other, one of the best matches of the year.
WALTER, Fabian Aichner, and Marcel Barthel vs. Jaxson Ryker, Wesley Blake, and Steve Cutler | Daytona Beach, FL | September 19
In the greatest surprise of the year, we had the incomparable WALTER show up in Daytona Beach, Florida, along with Imperium to go to absolute war with The Forgotten Sons. The crowd was in to everything and lost their minds when WALTER decided he was going to manhandle the huge Jaxson Ryker. This was a spectacle.
The Comedy
Rik Bugez vs. Brendan Vink | Daytona Beach, FL | August 17
In an honorable mention here, the entire crew was involved in this masterpiece. First of all, the audio guy played Bugez’s music in full which forced Bugez to air guitar for over three minutes straight. The referee was laughing in the corner as Bugez would try to look at him for help. Then, there’s Vink, an incredible character in his own right. The two exchanged sunset flip reversals until Bugez finally scored the pin, This was a team effort of greatness.
Tony Khan’s All Elite Wrestling was not supposed to succeed. If it lived for a month, it wasn’t supposed to be good. In fact, it hasn’t been good; most of the first nine weeks of television have been great.
AEW is a company that did not have TV in August, and outside of a couple pay-per-views and spot shows on Turner’s B/R Live app, it was brand new. Even optimists saw a hard six months for the company as it delved into weekly TV.
Instead, it has been a great six weeks of roaring crowds, of wrestlers off the creative leashes and performing with passion not seen outside Japan and the best international promotions, and a mishmash of indie wrestlers that were supposed to bomb but have instead been embraced and are slowly becoming stars.
The kid of a billionaire from Illinois wasn’t supposed to start a wrestling company and not only have a smooth operation, but a successful one. In doing so, he’s killed almost all of the previous notions about the wrestling business, and he’s found that failure will make you a punchline on podcasts, but success will make you hated.
Khan has been slandered as a “money mark” by the old guard of prognosticators in the wrestling media. “Mark” is a slur in the wrestling vernacular. It means you’re a fool who gives up their money for nothing. You’re the idiot who can’t manage the backstage politics, the ignorant sucker who doesn’t get the small stuff you can only learn through decades of mafia-like ritual and endless weeks on the road.
To prove how big of a mark Khan was, he hired four misfits as his executive management: an indie darling tag team, an oddball Canadian who quit WWE’s developmental program to wrestle matches in creek beds in Japan, and a WWE castoff who was pulled from television and expected to be grateful anyway.
While Khan’s success is the death knell of many of the notions of what it means to succeed in wrestling in the 2010s and beyond, it also signals the full legitimacy of the wrestling business. What’s more legitimate than a company founded by an NFL billionaire? This is a club even the President of the United States was denied entry to. It was negotiating a TV deal with major cable networks before putting on their first match.
Khan took wrestling and made it a legitimate business. On the other side, Vince McMahon has always held disgust for pro wrestling judging by how he’s produced it and tried to run from it. He has tried to desperately funnel his way into multiple businesses like movie studios that failed, two attempts at starting a new football league including one that’s earmarked for a quarter of the money from WWE’s new TV deals, and a bodybuilding federation. These weren’t business ventures, these were personal ventures to give McMahon the legitimacy he always craved.
AEW’s weaknesses are its strengths. The Young Bucks survived on their own merchandise business, by leveraging social media, and by creating a weekly YouTube show that’s pushed the creative bounds of the wrestlers involved and the platform in terms of using it to keep your personal business afloat.
Kenny Omega wanted more out of pro wrestling than what was in the United States, so he went to Japan and found inspiration in DDT Pro and New Japan. He became a resident and learned the language as he embraced the culture, and put on four of the greatest matches in the history of the business. He’s taken storytelling, psychology, and athleticism to another level.
Cody Rhodes had to watch his career fizzle and was met with disgust when he asked for his release from WWE. Within three years, he is one of the biggest stars in U.S. wrestling, one of its top draws, and one of its best performers. Unless John Cena or the Rock returns, Rhodes is the top babyface in the business. While Paul Levesque married his way into executive management, Rhodes earned his after three years at the so-called bingo halls, wrestling in the Tokyo Dome, and helming the best year in the history of Ring of Honor.
He studied independent wrestling and with his infamous checklist, he embraced it. He knew the importance of appearing in Pro Wrestling Guerilla, and his infamous Twitter checklist showed he had an understanding of who and what was popular and deemed important by fans. This simple move made him legit to indie wrestling fans like few WWE stars have managed. It also showed he was better promoting himself than the WWE marketing machine. He went back to his roots, ones he never knew he had, and came out the other side a star.
The misfits turned out to be geniuses. The Elite should be at the Aspen Institute or giving TED talks to entrepreneurs. Lord knows many need the help.
After two months of analysis, I’m less worried about AEW than WWE. AEW has long-term plans and yet remained flexible. It has set expectations to adhere to and it doesn’t involve getting bogged down with the other company down the digital dial. They are giving their wrestlers freedom and want them to become draws – they want them to become stars.
That was something WWE used to be very good at doing. They stopped and for one simple reason; Vince McMahon thought WCW’s rise was built on making wrestlers stars only to have them leave for more cash at the first chance.
Ironically, WWE is now in the situation often found at many of those “small fiefdoms” he so snarkily called small territories in a Sports Illustrated interview during the 1980s, where territories trusted the title only to family. The McMahons are the stars of WWE, and the WWE brand means everything. There are no stars outside of the family, and any wrestler perceived as such isn’t – they’re replaceable. That’s why fans have had to witness the grind of 50/50 booking and a company that cuts the legs off its own talent more than the competition ever could.
WWE will be around, but its monopoly days are over. As someone who has witnessed the demise of the newspaper and automotive industries up close, the similarities are startling. I don’t believe the company has the ability to change, because the template it has now set has been built and engrained for 20 years. They aren’t nimble enough on social media. The AEW guys are masters of that, and they’re quicker. If WWE makes a mark on a show, AEW counters it on social media or YouTube the next day.
AEW doesn’t look at WWE as competition the same way WWE does. WWE wants to crush them and put them out of business. AEW deals with them as another business in a competitive market in which doing your best business means servicing your customers. Ask WWE fans of recent years how well their company is doing there.
WWE has billions of dollars in TV deals going into the next decade. That should mean financial security, but this is also a company that’s adding years to deals and doubling pay, sometimes tripling it in some occasions, to lock talent away from AEW. The last estimate I read said WWE has over 200 wrestlers on contract. That alone means AEW has been a success for wrestlers.
But it hasn’t stopped with the checkbook. WWE has been hot-shotting for weeks and even before AEW was on TV. Its Saudi Arabia shows are a black eye to the company, and its move of Smackdown to Fox has left the company at the mercy of TV networks more so than it has ever been previously.
With the money comes the responsibility to deliver. WWE loaded its Wednesday NXT show with main roster talent and managed a win of 20,000 total viewers two weeks ago. AEW won every ratings category but 50+ and is still dominating in the core 18-35 and 18-49 demographics that advertisers pay the most attention to.
For those that think this is luck, keep in mind The Elite were regularly sponsored on its YouTube show by major companies, and even included some in matches (Cracker Barrel most prominently, as well as TGIF restaurants). WWE has always had the advantage on the business side, but that’s no longer the case. The Khan family runs Flex-N-Gate, building bumpers for a large portion of the world’s automotive manufacturers.
As much vitriol fans, former wrestling bookers, and media have for AEW, it doesn’t change that what we are seeing is a seismic event in the wrestling business, one there is no going back from. The carnival days are finally dead and for good. While many thought this was the case beforehand, WWE’s recent fiasco in Saudi Arabia with its talent show this wasn’t the case. AEW is the real deal.
The sunshine is now in, and many are running to the shadows – scared.
B.J. Bethel covered wrestling from 1998 to 2003 focusing on WWE’s developmental territories. He has covered the Russian election interference scandal and the Midwest opioid crisis for the Sydney Morning Herald. He has had bylines in the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and RogerEbert.com.
This year’s NXT TakeOver: WarGames is when I learned to stop worrying and just love the spectacle of the whole thing.
It’s an adjustment to go from a product that is entirely storyline driven to something that is much less so, but that’s what WarGames presents every year. It’s the one time a year where NXT puts slightly less emphasis on the story, and really focuses on the spectacle…because that’s what it is.
The WarGames matches are balls to the wall fun and insanity; a testament to NXT’s ability to tell cohesive stories even when they aren’t trying to that really shows the difference between the black and gold brand and Raw/SmackDown. Where the “main roster” Survivor Series matches lack, well, anything resembling a story or heat, NXT’s storylines are full of them. Characters stay true to who they are, and while they might be putting aside personal differences for one night, or even just 40 minutes, the personal issues still very much exist.
Who has ever cared about brand supremacy? Has anyone actually cared more about Raw than SmackDown? Is there one person, alive or dead, that will insist that they are only a SmackDown fan? It’s so strange that for this four week stretch, fans are supposed to buy into the idea that not only do the wrestlers care, but that they care this damn much. Even for WWE standards, it’s nonsense.
Anyway, WarGames is here again and should be a ton of fun. These are always the cards that stack the most talent simply because of the sheer numbers involved in a WarGames match. And brother, I am here for it. Now like we always do at this time, let’s run down this four match TakeOver card.
NXT Championship No. 1 contender match: Pete Dunne vs. Killian Dane vs. Damian Priest
For a match with such high stakes, this really doesn’t feel like a big deal. The reasonable explanation is because they made this match on Tuesday when not many people were paying attention. If the company simply wants the NXT title defended on Sunday, this match makes much more sense. Everyone in the men’s WarGames match has a better claim to the title than these three, but if this exists as a one-off showcase, by all means have this match and give these guys the platform.
My lack of caring about this match is through no fault of the perfect Pete Dunne, who continues to be excellent whenever he’s in the ring, but more on the shoulders of his two dance partners. Killian Dane needs more. He needs more character and more substance before he can really matter. Right now, he’s best defined by his hair and the chaos he causes. That’s certainly something, but it’s not much and nowhere near championship match level.
NXT really, really wants us to like Damian Priest. I get that, but isn’t he just another generic big man who can move? His matches have been wholly unremarkable with the exception of the ones with Dunne and he really hasn’t done anything to pop other than just be tall. His cyclone kick is kind of cool, but his finisher is the dirt worst. A dude who is a legit 6’5” using Roll The Dice as a finisher is some create-a-wrestler bullsh*t.
Like I said before, this is just a match to get the NXT title defended on Survivor Series with no future implications. The pieces are here for something fun and exciting, and that’s exactly what this should be. Since this is most likely is just a one time thing, let Peter win this one so he and Cole can tear the house down on Sunday.
Finn Balor vs. Matt Riddle
The Prince who was promised has finally, finally, finally, arrived. This is the good stuff and what wrestling dreams are made of. The level to which this dude’s natural charisma was stifled is both shocking and laughable. Getting the chance to press reset on pretty much his entire career post-NXT is wildly exciting.
What is even better is how easy it is to book Finn’s return to NXT because, well, all the guys he could wrestle range from good to drool-on-your-keyboard great. I want to see him wrestle literally every person involved in the men’s WarGames match. Dunne, Lio Rush, Angel Garza, little Moe with the gimpy leg, I could go on forever, baby. This is great. This is new and exciting, two things Prince Goddamn Devitt hasn’t been in or experienced in a long time.
With all the well deserved attention Balor has been getting, it’s important not to lose sight of one thing: Matt Riddle is the best male wrestler in NXT. The Undisputed Era have the belts, Johnny Gargano’s matches get the love, Tomasso is great, but Matt is the best. He has the best combination of look and in-ring skills of them all. He also wrestles such a unique style that fits his personality perfectly. It is all undeniably him. It is natural, organic, and it works.
There really isn’t anyone like the King of Bros. The only real, and admittedly fair, complaint with him is the mic work. He’s not suited for the meandering show opening promos that plague Raw and Smackdown, but lucky for us, NXT is neither of those things. This is just another example of letting a performer play to his tremendous strengths while masking the relative weakness.
This was supposed to be Balor vs. Gargano which is the only match that would have had a lower combined body fat percentage than this one. That match can still happen and will be great when it does, but this should be fantastic. I really hope this gets 20 minutes, so we can see Balor open up the engine. Finn has to win his first match back so this one is easy. Welcome back, Prince.
Women’s WarGames: Shayna Baszler, Bianca Belair, Io Shirai, Kay Lee Ray vs. Rhea Ripley, Candice LeRae, Tegan Nox and Mia Yim
If you are finally going to run an all women’s WarGames, this is a great time to do it. What better way to showcase eight of NXT’s most talented? That said, there is talent and then, there is talent. The heel team in this match is the latter. How can anyone truly expect the babyface team to win? Who would even want that team to win? Just look at it:
The person with more days as champion than anyone in NXT
A future champion who should already be at the top of the card
A Scottish lady who could kill me
The goddamn genius of the sky
These four would stomp out the entire Undisputed Era in the time it takes them to make their convoluted hand taunt. Did you know they were making a U and an E with their hands? I had no idea. I love this team so much and i would let every single one of them open multiple lines of credit in my name and ruin my life.
The other team in this match is also very good, but they just can’t possibly compare. In the interest of creating a parallel structure in this preview, here are some bullets about the other team:
Frightening Hot Topic lady who is way too young to be this good
The best pure babyface in NXT if they let her show it
An excellent wrestler with two knee braces and a great crowd connection
Mia Yim
They are all talented, but the team just isn’t at the same level as the others. That might sound like an insult, but it really isn’t. More than anything, this shows the incredible depth and talent of the NXT women’s division. That’s a common refrain in these columns for the past year or so, but that doesn’t make it any less true. The talent is staggering. I think it is almost an inarguable fact that this is the most female talent that has ever been in NXT. If you want to make the argument that the Four Horsewomen-era of NXT had more top-end talent, I’ll certainly listen. But top to bottom, there is just an obscene amount of talent and they are only getting better.
One would think that Dakota Kai comes into play during this match, either as a replacement for Mia Yim if she can’t go or somehow foiling outside interference from the heel side. The popular Internet idea that I would love to see happen is Yim turn on her team and join Baszler/Shafir/Duke. It would be great if someone else in that crew besides Shayna could, you know, wrestle. Heels take it. Io forever.
Men’s WarGames: The Undisputed Era (Adam Cole, Roderick Strong, Kyle O’Reilly, Bobby Fish) vs. Tommaso Ciampa, Keith Lee, Dominik Dijakovic and ?
I’m trusting NXT to not push the overwhelmingly easy narrative of “Four of these guys are a unit and the others don’t get along.” That is beyond played out and boring. It is super apparent that the Undisputed Era are a complete unit, even to the uninitiated. The matching t-shirts and entrances kind of give it away. What I really hope is that this match to sets up future title matches for all involved. Ciampa has an easy and obvious claim to the NXT title. While Lee and Dijakovic have already wrestled for the North American championship and even though it’s played out, I wouldn’t mind seeing them team up to go after the tag team belts. Any combination of wrestlers in this match can’t go wrong.
The real intrigue is in who the fourth member of Team Ciampa will be. Papa Hunter said it’s going to be a surprise and probably a good one. The only lame selection I can think of is Johnny Gargano. The other answer would have been a returning Finn Balor, but obviously, he has already returned. Since it has been established that NXT character alignments don’t matter all that much on Raw and Smackdown, is the opposite true? If so, the best person is Sami Zayn. Imagine that pop for a minute.
His music hits and the roof blows off the Allstate Arena. He was the perfect NXT champion, and in my opinion, the best NXT wrestler full stop. You can argue that Balor brought NXT to where it is now, but Zayn poured the foundation for what became the NXT castle. If not him, who else? Who else really makes an impact? Would they really let Kevin Owens or Seth Rollins pull double duty? A returning Samoa Joe would be almost as beautiful as Sami if only so he could turn on his team. The more I write about it, the more I want it. I need it. I need Sami Zayn back in NXT even if it’s only for one night.
I don’t really care who wins this match. Rather, I just care about how it sets up the next few weeks of NXT. Since the Undisputed Era won the ladder match to gain an advantage in the match, let’s say that Ciampa and the “good guys” take this one. Just please give me Sami Zayn if only for one night, una noche.
Mike DellaCamera’s favorite day of the week is now Wednesday and he loves leftovers. Find him on Twitter.
