CMLL - 10/5/1990 - Los Hermanos Dinamita vs Lizmark, Sangre Chicana and Rayo De Jalisco Jr.

 CMLL - 10/5/1990 - Los Hermanos Dinamita vs Lizmark, Sangre Chicana and Rayo De Jalisco Jr.

Dinamita's take the 2nd fall

The 3rd fall finish

Post match brawling

The Dinamitas won the 2nd and 3rd fall here and in the 3rd won when Lizmark jumped off the top and accidentally nailed Sangre Chicana. The majority of the match wasn't that bad, though it tailed off in the second half. This was all lucha brawling though. Lucha brawling is never super great, but they atleast have some passion in their strikes and they sell them, even if they aren't super great. Even though Cien Caras couldn't do that much in-ring and wasn't a great worker, you can really see his charisma in the way he moves and the way he heels it up, which offsets his limitations. Sangre looked good in what we saw here, but he was clearly the 3rd wheel and I don't think it helped him. The match was mostly just the rudos slapping and kicking the technicos for the first half, then they went after Rayo's mask for a while, and I was checking out until the finish. After the match, they brawled a little in the first row and were laying on everyone which I thought was okay.

UWA 2/9/1992 - Dos Caras, Tinieblas and Tinieblas Jr. vs Canek, Kokina and Gigante Warrior

 UWA 2/9/1992 - Dos Caras, Tinieblas and Tinieblas Jr. vs Canek, Kokina and Gigante Warrior

Kokina is Yokozuna, when he could still move. And he was good then. Gigante Warrior is Giant Warrior. He didn't do too much in the US for some reason but was one half of Island of the Giants with Nitron in All Japan. He had Dominic Dijak-itis, where he was tall but kind of thin.

 

The foreigners and Canek won the first with Yoko kind of just falling on Dos and Gigante hitting a bad side slam on Tinieblas.

Anybody want some Alushe-pancakes?

Techincos grab the 2nd fall

The rudos were DQ'd for this

The technicos won the 2nd and 3rd falls here after losing the first. The rudos were DQ'd in the 3rd when Kokina accidentally splashed the ref. Then the other Samoans came in and beat up Tinieblas Jr. This wasn't bad at all. Kokina looked really good and there were some pretty decent dropkicks by everyone. I loved Kokina squashing Alushe and then Alushe getting revenge on him. I just wish this would have went longer and had a clean finish.

AAA Triplemania II-A 4/26/1994 - Los Payasos vs Los Hermanos Dinamita

 AAA Triplemania II-A 4/26/1994 - National Trios Titles - Los Payasos vs Los Hermanos Dinamita

Dinamitas grab the first fall

The Payasos would then grab the 2nd fall right after this in quick fashion by rolling up Universo and catapulting Cien into the top turnbuckle.

The Payasos go under the cover and out pops 3 identical orange clowns!

Payasos win!

Lucha matches are usually not real easy to cover due to their format and this was just odd. The entrances were just as long as the actual match, which I hope was clipped and not just 8 minutes long. There wasn't much to talk about here. They zipped through 3 falls with the Dinamitas winning the first with a cool leg pin and then losing the 2nd and the 3rd. During the 3rd fall with one of the Payasos  was pinned and out, they all grabbed orange masks under a sheet and tricked the Dinamitas to win. The entrances were the only real highlight here with the Paysos getting a kid in a Superman costume and a guy on a unicycle while the Dinamitas had two girls with big sparklers and fireworks. Sadly, the match didn't live up to its entrances.

AEW Double or Nothing 5/24/2020

AEW Double or Nothing 5/24/2020

I had some other things going on during this, but I wanted to share my thoughts on the parts of the show I saw.

Best Friends vs Private Party
15 minute pre-show openers are not good. These are supposed to be quick samples, not lengthy affairs. Private Party's stock really has only gone down since the first few episodes of AEW Dynamite and while they aren't a finished product, they had room to grow. Unfortunately, as you will see later in the show and as we see often in AEW, people like them have gotten shafted in favor of The Elite and their friends. This match would have been really helped by fans being there.

Casino Ladder Match
I missed most of this. I'm over ladder matches. Everything you could do in them has been done. And this isn't 1993 or even 2001 where a great showing gets you places. These matches now just scream as being dangerous filler. The comedy stuff with Marko Stunt was stupid and like always Darby Allin took some reckless bumps. There was a bunch of sloppiness here including a botched finish.

MJF vs Jungle Boy
A good outing for both guys. This went too long and they did too much like always. Jungle Boy showed he can go here and is ready soon for bigger and better things. MJF was good but would have been better with a crowd to work with.

I didn't bother with either the women's or pretending to be a woman's matches, nor will I ever with the latter.

Dustin Rhodes vs Shawn Spears
Man has Shawn Spears fallen. This dude got a semi-main spot when he first arrived and is now a complete joke. They completely jobbed him out here and made him out to be a fool. And the highlight of his gimmick with having a legend as a manager means little because Jake and Arn are also managers now too. Tully, you would never go for this if it was you. Don't let this happen to your boy either.

Cody vs Lance Archer
Like a lot of Cody matches, it was long, they did too much and it was slow. The nonsense with Arn didn't help the match, though Mike Tyson stole the show.  As someone else put it, AEW is "Where the big boys lay", going off on WCW's "Where the big boys play" as AEW has had hosses like Cobb, Wardlow, Archer and Lee lose. You don't have hosses or monsters lose because then they are less threatening which defeats the whole purpose of their existence. Where does Archer go from here and how does this benefit him in anyway? Meanwhile if Cody lost, he could have challenged again down the line and not lost too much momentum.

Jon Moxley vs Brodie Lee
Brodie's booking and gimmick has not been good at all so far and it has really exposed him. The whole "definitely not Vince McMahon" gimmick has really been lousy. All common sense would tell you that he wins tonight, yet AEW went against the grain. There was no reason for him to lose this and I fail to see what he gained from this. Moxley, after years of main event work is still not a great wrestler nor is he a real intriguing personality. Like everything else, this was too long.

Stadium Stampede - The Elite vs The Inner Circle
I've always been intrigued by wrestling matches in non-wrestling settings, as I've mentioned here before. This was entertaining and funny, but so are comedians. The difference is, they don't take powerbombs through guardrails or get slammed on pool tables.  As the saying goes, they were "so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should". The more you think about this one, the less sense it makes, but the marks in the ring were much more concerned about getting their laughs in than protecting the business. Make sure to care and believe in their serious angles though like an on/off switch because The Elite said so.

Overall thoughts: This was a really long show. Everything went too long and everyone did too much as usual. The booking was questionable and their decisions to expose the business were also questionable. I did about four other things while watching this show and I still didn't really miss that much.

Thoughts on Hana Kimura's death

Thoughts on Hana Kimura's death

NOTE - I may offend you. I'm not being edgy, I'm really just a person who typically has unusual, strange and unpopular opinions.

Hana Kimura's death is really an odd situation for a number of reasons.

I'm completely baffled how a pro wrestler of all types of people, would kill themselves over what fans think. This is a job where you encourage people to get mad at you and to harass you, and apparently, it drove her over the edge. I'd think if anything wrestlers would enjoy this situation and would try to gain more heat off of it.

I'm also really baffled that a girl with the golden ticket would do this. I always figured like a lot of other people that Hana would end up rich, famous or both. Not only was she super attractive, which was enough on its own, but she had charisma and a presence.  I said many times that she could be awful in ring and still probably do well due to her looks. While other people like Jungle Kyona have to prove they can play, people like Hana have to prove they can't, usually multiple times over. Even if she somehow did fail in that manner, her looks always meant she could marry a guy with money.

I've always felt something was off with Hana, though I've never met her personally and don't know that much about her non-wrestling life. She was absolutely gorgeous, yet dyed her hair goofy colors and always felt like a person who wanted to be something else, hence maybe her over the top behavior sometimes.

Whatever caused her death, I think the hatred she got online was more the sprinkles of the sundae issue, not the ice cream. I don't think it was the root cause, but the final shots. Only Hana and maybe some of her friends know what was really going on.

I do think those same friends or perhaps even Stardom itself dropped the ball here though. There had to have been some signs somewhere.

Hana will be missed. She's easily another of many wrestling "what if's" and is without a doubt another pro wrestling tragedy. Her death is going to be something that is going to be continued to be talked about for 20-30 years and I wouldn't even be shocked if like a Kurt Cobain or a Bruiser Brody, the legend of Hana Kimura grows after her death.

I hope Hana has found her peace and I hope her mother Kyoko will be okay.

We cared, Hana.

WWE Wrestlemania 36 - Firefly Funhouse Match - John Cena vs Bray Wyatt

WWE Wrestlemania 36 - Firefly Funhouse Match - John Cena vs Bray Wyatt

This was something like we've never seen before in wrestling. This was a moment in wrestling history that is going to be remembered for a long time to come. With this and the Taker/AJ match, wrestling likely changed forever this weekend.

But at what price?

You can't run this in front of a live crowd. You can't take this on a house show tour. You can probably do a sequel with Bray/Cena, but after that? And if random WWE midcarders thought it was hard to get over before, just wait until they try and follow this. How do you even go back to WWE wrestling, yet alone something more sports based after this? How do you even attempt to explain this?

A lot of people called this a series finale and if anything felt like a jumping the shark moment, this was definitely it. Whatever was left to expose in wrestling was exposed over these last two nights in many different ways.

WWE Wrestlemania 36 - Boneyard Match - AJ Styles vs The Undertaker

WWE Wrestlemania 36 - Boneyard Match - AJ Styles vs The Undertaker

I was bored and not interested by the rest of the show, but I did catch this.

I've always been a fan of wrestling matches outside of the ring. I loved the Austin/Booker T supermarket fight. I was intrigued by DDT's attempt at it in an office building and I liked some of their matches at camp sites as well. While DDT got a lot sillier with it than I would have, it's a neat concept. I've written up matches like that myself for fun.

What differed here was that it wasn't done live and really had movie-style production done for it. The match could have been done live and really wouldn't have lost anything had it been done that way, but it was done this way to cover Taker's physical issues.

I really enjoyed it. Both guys played up to their characters. They did things you would expect them to do and we probably got a better match/segment than we would have gotten live. The match/segment also was believable for the most part, atleast in a wrestling sense, minus the teleporting. I didn't see the need for that.

Already, I am seeing a lot of people call for more of these and for these to become the norm. That's a bad idea. This same match wouldn't have worked with a Dolph Ziggler or a Kofi Kingston. This match needed a really strong character/gimmick to work. The match also benefited from still being fresh. As we talked about above, there were similar things done, but, few people saw them. Everyone saw this tonight.

It was hard for me to watch this and not think this was the future of wrestling or at the very least was a lifeboat for something that declined and gotten very stale. But like anything else, the more its done, the less special it will be and the less effect it will have.