The Wrestling Thread

[DA Baracus]

Just reading about Santino had me laughing. The guy was quality. His retort to Hardcore Holly was brilliant

[Chris McDonald]

dunno if it's been mentioned but ive heard a big rumour that Rusev and Lana are bringing back the European title and vacating/retiring the united states title on Raw tonight

Edited December 15, 2014 by Chris McDonald

[TheGreenMonster]

dunno if it's been mentioned but ive heard a big rumour that Rusev and Lana are bringing back and vacating/retiring the united states title on Raw tonight

Yeah she apparently posted a picture of the new title belt a couple of days ago on twitter and then quickly took it back down.

[Chris McDonald]

http://www.wrestlingnewssource.com/news/37258/WWE-Possibly-Bringing-Back-A-Retired-Title-Belt-For/

[Musketeer Gripweed]

Bray Wyatt's opponent at Mania allegedly.

[Bert Raccoon]

Bray Wyatt's opponent at Mania allegedly.

Looks like Cena's grandpa.

[JamieStevenson]

Don't think Wyatt needs to face Taker at all. He's already got wins over Daniel Bryan, John Cena and Dean Ambrose. As part of The Wyatt Family, they humped The Shield. Facing a hideous looking Taker with nothing at all to gain is definitely a step down.

[Ira Gaines]

Bray simply doesn't have very good matches often. Why would they put him in a match which would so badly expose him?

[Ludo*1]

Dave Meltzer is the one running with the rumour.

[The Ginger Prince]

Bray Wyatt's opponent at Mania allegedly.

That can't be Undertaker surely!?

[The Naitch]

That can't be Undertaker surely!?

He's looking more and more like Ronny Huybrechts every day.

[Big River]

Even if Taker was still in tip-top shape, a match with Wyatt makes no sense. Especially with Sting part of the company, who could give Taker a match people actually want to see.

[djchapsticks]

Bray Wyatt's opponent at Mania allegedly.

Christ, he looks like he's seriously ill.

[JamieStevenson]

Been loving Lucha Underground recently. Good bit of fun.

[Christophe]

DDT - God Bless DDT 2014 - 30th November 2014

Just catching up with some of the Japanese promotion's recent shows. DDT have had a cracking year, probably my second favourite promotion of the year worldwide after NJPW. Omega may have gone to the big league in Japan but Ibushi, Endo, Takeshita and Hirata are still doing their stuff brilliantly, the bottom to mid card is full of solid, promising guys and their dojo promotion DNA is developing wrestlers a least on a par with NXT for me. If all you've heard of DDT before is Ibushi and Omega fighting sex-dolls then i implore you to look past the comedy stuff the promotion is best known for and dip in. God Bless DDT 2014 is an excellent 'dip-in' point...

Antonio Honda, DJ Nira, Michael Nakazawa and Hoshitango vs KUDO, Yukio Sakaguchi, Gota Ihashi and MIKAMI

Group of comedy guys vs group of serious guys. Love Sakaguchi in these type of matches. Plays it totally deadpan, not acknowledging the sillyness on the other side and just attempts to absolutely destroy. KUDO with a flying double knee to see the serious guys home **3/4

DDT EXTREME TITLE #1 CONTENDERSHIP

Keisuke Ishii vs Tomomitsu Matsunaga vs Masa Takanashi

Age old three-way story telling here with two guys forming an alliance early on then turning on each other. Not given long so lots of fast, solid stuff with all three guys getting a go at looking strong. Takanashi is ready with the Takatonic when Matsunaga reverses for the surprise win with the cradle ***

Kota Ibushi and Shunma Katsumata vs Smile Squash (Yasu Urano and Akito)

This match is sponsored by Wella and each team has a couple of stylists in their corner. Ibushi is looking for a new partner in Golden Storm Riders after Kenny Omega's departure for NJPW, here he is giving Katsumata a try-out. Ibushi sells the jerseys here by popping off to the stylists to fix his hair after messing it up during a move, allowing Smile Squash to take advantage of Katsumata for the win. They are presented with a prize of a year's supply of Wella hair products for their troubles ***

KO-D SIX MAN TAG TEAM CHAMPIONSHIP

T2HIDE (Sanshiro Takagi, Toru Owashi and Kazuki Hirata) vs Brahman Shu, Brahman Kei and Gorgeous Matsuno

The Brahman brothers have an excellent comedy monks gimmick and are terrifically entertaining. I've seen them a ton of times in smaller promotions where the gimmick comes across as amatuerish slapstick in half-full halls, but here in a full to bursting point Korakuen it works a treat. The Brahman's hurl bowling balls and suitcases around with abandon before the frail Matsuno surprisingly picks up the fall after the Brahman's spit black mist into Hirata's eyes and we have new champions ***1/4

Daisuke Sasaki vs Shigehiro Irie

The video i have of this starts with this one in progress and on completing it and checking the match running time it appears i get less than half of the match here. Irie wins with the Frog Splash, but i'm not going to rate this one without seeing the bulk of the match

KO-D Tag Team Championship

Happy Motel (Konosuke Takeshita and Tetsuya Endo) vs Makoto Oishi and a mystery partner

So the mystery partner is Shiori Asahi and he gets a heroic welcome from the crowd and bombarded with streamers upon his entrance into the ring like a retiring grand champion. Oishi and Asahi are excellent here, breaking out some pretty fun and innovative offensive moves. They attempt a kind of double Canadian Destroyer a coupe of times before eventually nailing it and the crowd goes fucking nuts! The defending Happy Motel prove too strong in the end and successfully defend the titles before KUDO and Sakaguchi hit the ring for a facedown setting up the tag championship match for the Never Mind show in December ***3/4

KO-D Openweight Championship

HARASHIMA vs Soma Takao

Takao won this title shot in a rock/paper/scissors contest at the Omega farewell show, but we get a good wee video package here highlighting his rise over the last 6 years and they do a fine job of making the match mean something despite the way he got it. HARASHIMA is DDT's dominant champion, he has much the same charisma here as Hiroshi Tanahashi has in NJPW, albeit on a smaller scale. We get a slow build to this at the beginning which comes as a surprise as everything before it on the card has been done at a million mph. HARASHIMA is predictably dominant throughout here, much due to the fact that Takao is only here via luck and isn't usually a headliner, but massive credit to the DDT bookers as even though Takao plays the plucky underdog there is never a sense that it's impossible he might pull the upset off. They have a great knack of doing that in DDT while still keeping the titles strong and meaning something. The big bookers across the Pacific could learn a thing or two from DDT in that respect. The finish is great with Takao fighting back to hoist the champ into a sort of over-the-back Tombstone which HARASHIMA kicks and fights against but he's still dropped head first. HARASHIMA kicks out at 2 and 9/10ths and after a few slugs are traded the champ hits the Blue Thunder Driver followed by a Buzzsaw Kick to the head, followed by a Somata and takes the win after a cracking 20 minutes ****

Edited December 18, 2014 by Christophe

[Ira Gaines]

WCW Nitro 04/09/1995

Lets see how long I can keep this up for. From the very beginning, I'm going to TRY and get every episode of RAW and Nitro reviewed. We'll start with Nitro this week. There's not going to be any sort of pattern to this. After each week, I'm going to score them against each other.

Jushin Thunder Liger vs. Brian Pillman

A rematch of one of the very best PPV openers ever here. Pillman wasn't quite the wrestler he used to be at this point. Liger was still fucking brilliant though. This is an all action opening match. Some really awkward stuff in there though. Couple of big botches from Pillman, and a Moonsault from Liger is just so telegraphed, you feel like shouting at Pillman just to get the f**k out of the way. The match develops into a fun match by the end though and it's a good first match for Nitro. ***

We go to Eric Bischoff with Hulk Hogan at Pastamania. He's got Big Bubba and he feels sorry for him. It's the usual stuff, but you have to appreciate the sheer star power Hogan has even doing stuff like this.

Sting vs. Ric Flair

Another historically significant match here. So much so actually, that it was the very last match to take place on a Nitro. Another big moment happens at the start though with Lex Luger standing on the aisle and making his return to WCW, and managing to distract both Sting and Flair for a while. I forgot that Sting used to just no sell the chops of Flair for fun. Those fuckers looked hard as well. This match features a whopping five Gorilla Press Slams. Think that Sting might have been a bit over reliant on that move. This is a bit all over the place and Sting's no selling is a bit tiresome, but it's a good pacey match between the pair and good TV fare. **3/4

Arn Anderson and Ric Flair go at it post-match, which the fans are LOVING. The security manages to keep them apart. Scott Norton all of a sudden turns up. Norton wants an opponent. Randy Savage turns up out of nowhere too. This is great stuff. So we are going to get Scott Norton vs. Randy Savage in the near future.

They talk about Saturday Night, which has The Blue Bloods vs. Sting and Randy Savage. I want ALL of that. Get the Saturday Nights online!

Hulk Hogan © vs. Big Bubba - WCW World Heavyweight Championship

I'd expect a match like this to follow the usual Hogan formula, of take the beating and come back and win, and it certainly does for a bit, but it's a lot more two sided than you'd expect from a predictable Hogan match. More comebacks and plenty of domination. The match also shows how much of a cheat Hogan always was. Schiavone calls it fighting fire with fire, which would be fair if he didn't always do things that way. Anyways, a good fun main event between these two, who at one point could sleepwalk to a good match. ***

Post match, Dungeon of Doom members hit the ring. Lex Luger hits the ring though and does a number on folk. Luger and Hogan then come face to face and Hogan clearly didn't see Luger return and now they start shouting at each other. The fans chant for Luger. Luger says that he doesn't care when, he's getting his shot at the WCW title, and takes lots of shots at WWE in the process, calling them shit. Hogan tells Luger that he'll put the title on the line next week. Then they start pushing again.

So that was a cracking show. RAW wasn't on this week either, so we only get one review! No score necessary. Toodles.

[Quentin Taranbino]

The Wyatt Family

[Adrian Madaschi]

Not sure if I wid, looks too much like Bo.

[Sherrif John Bunnell]

Embarrassing pissheads 4life

http://www.sescoops.com/kevin-nash-son-arrested-battery-bloody-altercation/

[Gianfranco]

Nash looks like he's going for the clay morrow from sons of anarchy look