Impressions on Wrestling

I am writing this shortly after the finish of Ring of Honor's biggest show of the year, Final Battle. Ring of Honor has had a rough few years in the eyes of the hardcore wrestling fan. Outside of their New Japan co-promoted shows they have had a tough time getting together good wrestling cards that create buzz. Months ago, I talked about the my positive thoughts on the ending of Global Wars 2016, which provided an angle that could provide a talking point. Ultimately, that show did not generate a ton of buzz, but ROH kept on trucking. Ring of Honor has gotten a lot of crap about lack of talent and new stars. I believe that 2016 will prove to be a very important year to the history of Ring of Honor. ROH took a step to fixing their top end talent pool by signing two of the biggest stars from the UK in Marty Scurll and Will Ospreay. They also are working with Cody Rhodes and used him very well on tonight's show. Final Battle is always booked as Ring of Honor's big finale to

This week was the true start of the "New Era" according to the WWE, and it certainly seemed like it after Monday Night.  Tuesday brought us the first Smackdown Live after the brand split.  The "Blue Brand" had a lot to live up to, which was a truly impossible task. I will get this out of the way... Smackdown was nowhere near the quality of RAW this week.  But to be fair, next week's RAW probably won't be anywhere near that high bar either.  Smackdown has a much smaller roster, with very little depth in the mid card (as of now) and they have two divisions with nothing to fight for in the tag teams and women.  That being said this show had some highlight moments and has some things to look forward to.  They also did some questionable things too. Before we do that let's talk about the new look and feel for the show. Much like the other show, Smackdown got a new intro with a new song to boot.  They had a new set and had a lot of blue everywhere,

This week's WWE Raw was a big deal. It was the first episode of the new era.  They needed to bring something different. They needed a good show to get the brand started off right.  They didn't deliver a good show... They delivered a great show.  To start off the new feel, they had a much improved opening video/song. They started the show with a talking segment to establish the evening, and then never looked back.  But the question isn't whether or not this show rocked, but why did it work so much better than the last year of RAW?  Well there are quite a few things that worked in this episode's favor, so I am going to break it down a bit. 1.) Making Stars Holy cow, this has to be the first thing I cover.  They made two stars tonight and also highlighted other talents effectively.  Finn Balor and Sasha Banks came out of this show looking like a trillion dollars.  The crowd was into Finn Balor, but I don't think they believed he would win the fatal

The dust has settled on Battleground.  Starting tomorrow, we enter a "New Era" in the WWE with the brand extension in full effect.  The show was very entertaining from top to bottom, and did a good job at setting up stars for this new era. This show had very few low points and held interest for over 3 hours, and that includes the Kickoff show.  They started setting a good foundation for the new era with Breezango beating the Usos on the Battleground Kickoff show. This sets them up nicely as a meaningful team in the Smackdown tag division. Bayley and Sasha celebrate The main card started off with a bang. We got the first appearance of Bayley on a WWE main roster card.  This was billed as a one night rental for Sasha Banks.  This may be an extremely smart move to introduce her, let her finish her NXT run, then bring her on after Summerslam.  Bayley received an enormous pop from the Washington D.C. crowd, and all the ladies gave a good performance for a very solid o

The WWE Draft is done. The landscape has been set for the new "war" in WWE... Raw vs. Smackdown. On one side, we have Stephanie McMahon and Mick Foley running the "Flagship show" in RAW. On the other side, we have Shane McMahon and Daniel Bryan running the "underdog" show in Smackdown. Let us look and see how the draft went down and then we will analyze the outcome. RAW Seth Rollins Charlotte - WWE Womens Champion Finn Balor (NXT Callup) Roman Reigns Brock Lesnar The New Day- WWE Tag Team Champions Sami Zayn Sasha Banks Chris Jericho Rusev w/ Lana - United States Champion Kevin Owens Enzo & Cass The Club (Gallows & Anderson) Big Show Nia Jax (NXT Callup) Neville Cesaro Sheamus Golden Truth Titus O'Neil Paige Darren Young Sin Cara Jack Swagger The Dudley Boys Summer Rae Mark Henry Braun Strowman Bo Dallas The Shining Stars Alicia Fox Dana Brooke Curtis Axel Smackdown Dean Ambrose-WWE Champion AJ Sty

Wednesday night kicked off the opening of the 32 man tournament known as the Cruiserweight Classic. This is an extremely significant venture for the WWE and the WWE Network.  Growing up a wrestling fan, I didn't think I would see something like this happen in a major North American promotion, and certainly not the WWE.  The fact that most of the talent lineup are not under a WWE contract makes it even more fascinating. What also makes this tournament fascinating is the presentation.  This show is being treated like a sporting event with serious discussion on weight cutting, fighting styles and the representations of their countries.  They even did a Bracketology special.  This is a complete departure from the WWE presentation style.  This isn't sports entertainment, this is professional wrestling, and they are pushing that fact.  Mauro Ranallo and Daniel Bryan bring a feel of legitimacy and excitement to their announcing that this show feels even more special. They are pur

Last night's PPV was an important one for Ring of Honor.  Reports had been running about the unhappiness in the locker room, and that people wanted to jump off the ship.  They had been bringing in talent from New Japan for a while now, but the shows felt without any weight.  This how did not have that issue by show end. I am going to break down a few highlights from the undercard before I get to the big finish... War Machine vs. The Briscoes was a lot of fun.  Good brawling and near falls aplenty.  Kudos to these teams for putting on a show that provided a spark to the lower end of the card. Naito vs. O'Reilly was a fun match, although it suffered from the ending being obvious to the live crowd. Okada and Moose vs.  Tanahashi and Mike Elgin was a very good match.  I liked the flow of the match and Moose came out looking strong, which is good for ROH Bobby Fish beating Ishii was unexpected and appreciated by this viewer.  Good match that put Bobby Fish over against a

As a very passionate and dedicated wrestling fan, it has been hard to watch the main WWE product for some time now.  The writing was sloppy, nothing felt important, and they shoved the same thing down your throat for three hours.  Tonight felt different from that norm.  Coming off of a lackluster Wrestlemania and a decent RAW the week before, WWE came out swinging this week. The WWE announced that Shane McMahon was in charge for the second week in a row due to "social media" demands.  So in story, it still doesn't make a lot of sense... but no Vince or the Authority has been refreshing. Right away Shane laid out a solid show with a Women's Championship match as well as the start of the Tag Team Championship #1 Contenders tournament. He also announced a match between AJ Styles and Sami Zayn where Sami could add himself to the main event of Payback if he won.  This set up Kevin Owens coming out which started a fun confrontation.  This led to another good thing which

The internet... The internet is a giant cloud of knowledge, media, information, and opinions. Many innovations have formed through the internet; online chat, webcam video, news delivery, message boards, streaming videos, and many other innovations. As the base of users has grown so has the technology and the features.  Now you can write a opinion piece on your own blog without any job and have hundreds read it within days. You can stream a trailer for a new film within minutes of it's release.  The world wide web has truly changed the way people obtain information and entertainment. Today we will be talking about how much the internet has changed the way we consume Professional Wrestling. To do that properly, we shall go back in time... First we start from the beginning. In the late 19th century, where wrestling was a side show at events such as carnivals. For decades the only way to watch professional wrestling was in person.  In the United States, television brought profe