REVIEW: ROH Death Before Dishonor (7-21-2023)

From Trenton, New Jersey, at the CURE Insurance Arena, fka Sovereign Bank Arena and Sun National Bank Center! Insane to me that ROH hasn’t been to New Jersey since 2012 and only once since 2009.

I am ready to die before I take part in or even observe any dishonor.

Chris Benoit vs MVP (WWE, 5-20-2007)

WWE Judgment Day, St. Louis, MO

A request! Have never seen this match. Was kind of in a soft lull with my wrestling fandom in ’07.

This is two-out-of-three falls and Benoit is defending his United States championship. The official theme song of the show is “I Don’t Wanna Stop” by Ozzy Osbourne! JBL thinks “Ozzy is awesome,” and apparently he “rocked the house” on Smackdown recently. I’d need a fact check there.

Wyatt Family vs The Shield (WWE, 2-23-2014)

WWE Elimination Chamber, Minneapolis, MN

A request! I’ve actually kinda-sorta been meaning to get around to doing the four Shield vs Wyatt Family six-man tags of 2014, and now this request came in, and thank you for making it the first of them so I wouldn’t have had to immediately watch this one and then anything else that came before in the series. I appreciate this, because my brain is such that I just might not have been able to do that.

Anyway, I loved this series of matches, and then the Shield vs Evolution matches from the same time frame. It was just a real golden era of “trios matches” in WWE.

(Requests open and tips always appreciated!)

Team Sendai Girls vs Team ROH (Chikara, 9-16-2012)

Chikara King of Trios, Easton, PA

A request! It is the semifinals of the 2012 King of Trios, and we’ve got Team ROH, the obvious pairing of Mike Bennett and the Young Bucks, against Team Sendai Girls, the crew of Meiko Satomura, DASH Chisako, and Sendai Sachiko.

(Requests open and tips always appreciated!)

Adrian Adonis vs Bob Orton Jr (SWCW, 5-21-1983)

Southwest Championship Wrestling, Houston, TX

So after watching the Adrian Adonis “Dark Side of the Ring,” I wanted to take my own advice and watch some old Adrian Adronis. This is one that I always think of quick, because it’s the time I learned how much different pre-“Adorable Adrian” was.

This is on the Wrestling Gold DVD set that came out in the early 2000s, which features Dave Meltzer and Jim Cornette commentary on and over some matches from the early 80s, mostly. It was an invaluable sort of pickup for someone like me then; like, these aren’t all great matches, but the footage and commentary combination is incredible for someone who wanted to know more, and this was long before all this type of stuff was easy to get within seconds, minutes, or hours.

It also also incredibly strange to hear Meltzer and Cornette sitting and having reasonable conversations. It’s tough to get old and have the world change.

(Requests open and tips always appreciated!)

REVIEW: Dark Side of the Ring – The Tragic Fall of Adrian Adonis

This was a request, and I’ll be straight up with you up front:

1. Not sure what I’m going to do with this, because it’s not a comedic sort of format like with “EXPOSED! Pro Wrestling’s Greatest Secrets.”
2. I never watch “Dark Side of the Ring.” I have before, and then I stopped. It’s not that I hate seeing this dark side of the ring brought to light, I mostly know all this stuff they’ve talked about on any given episode, at least in passing if not in greater detail, and if I don’t, none of it surprises me because it’s a business full of tragedy and worse. I made my peace with that a long time ago, and I don’t need to think the wrestlers are my friends or whatever. It’s because I could like it, except it’s your standard cheap ass TV-doc stuff, with constant music telling me at all times how I’m supposed to feel about any given bit of information. But I also don’t hate it. And listen, I’m not rich, groceries and bills are a hassle every month, I’ll do just about anything for money, not to get rich or internet influential, but so that I can buy $13 grocery store sushi as a little treat once in a while without it being a massive financial blunder.

Anyways, we’ll see how this goes!

(Requests open and tips always appreciated!)

Daniel Bryan vs Jack Swagger + Antonio Cesaro + Ryback (WWE, 7-22-2013)

WWE Monday Night Raw, Austin, TX

A request! John Cena had recently selected Daniel Bryan as his opponent for SummerSlam, and this episode of Raw opens with a contract signing for SummerSlam. GM Brad Maddox is not a big fan! So then John Cena defends Daniel Bryan even though Daniel Bryan is small and wimpy. Dunno if you noticed, he has a beard! It wasn’t that long ago that having a beard was an utterly fascinating physical trait to people who worked in the WWE office. Daniel Bryan in 2013 might as well have had a big fucken unicorn horn for as wild as they found having that beard.

(Requests open and tips always appreciated!)

Gunther vs Sheamus (WWE, 9-3-2022)

WWE Clash at the Castle, Cardiff, Wales

A request! I watched this show and loved this match, but I didn’t get into any detail about it back then. Good show, too! I like shows with atmosphere! WWE should exclusively run places they never run. This will eventually run out, but until then we’ll all have a great time.

(Requests open and tips always appreciated!)

Jim Neidhart vs Greg Valentine (WWF, 1-29-1989)

WWF on Z Channel, Los Angeles, CA

Technically this aired on Jan. 30, but whatever, at this point if anyone’s looking for this match they’re looking for this date.

The other day while watching the Canadian Stampede main event, Jim Neidhart threw a couple of short forearms that made me want to watch some Anvil singles matches. And then I thought, I bet somewhere along the way, he wrestled Greg Valentine on some MSG show or other. They actually had three matches on early ’89 WWF regional TV, and this was the first. Let’s see how much these bruisers half-ass it in filler matches.

(Requests open and tips always appreciated!)

Orange Cassidy vs Stokely Hathaway (IWTV, 2-10-2019)

IWTV, Los Angeles, CA

A request! This one I remember making the rounds on “social,” as it is the Grammys Street Fight for Cassidy’s IWTV Independent Wrestling championship, a parking garage street fight essentially and that good, old-fashioned, flash in the pan, beloved form…

~CINEMATIC WRESTLING~

Folks, we couldn’t get enough of this, until as a group, we all went, “I think we’ve had enough of this.” It was harsh and it was sudden. But everyone kinda earned it.

(Requests open and tips always appreciated!)