Still tweaking some formatting changes, as we enter a big full work day with a lot of wrestling to accompany it.
RATINGS
Penta El Zero Miedo vs Jay White (AEW Dynamite 10/18/23)
Rating: ***
Women’s World Championship Eliminator: Hikaru Shida vs Emi Sakura (AEW Dynamite 10/18/23)
Rating: **3/4
Kenny Omega vs Kyle Fletcher (AEW Dynamite 10/18/23)
Rating: ***
Astronauts vs Crazy Lovers (BJW Saikyou Tag League Final 2022)
Rating: ***1/2
Rating: ***1/4
King of the Mountain Championship: Bobby Roode (c) vs Lashley (TNA Bound For Glory 2015)
Rating: ***
Rating: ***
Reviews
Not much to say about this, but I did want to note that it’s a real shame that this era of TNA has been memory-holed so hard because Andrew Everett takes one of the most “that had to suck” bumps off the top of the cables I’ve ever seen at the very end. It’s fucked up.
Rating: ***
Women’s Knockout Championship: Gail Kim (c) vs Awesome Kong (TNA Bound For Glory 2015)
Speaking of memory-hole, if you asked me if Gail Kim and Awesome Kong had a match outside of their vaunted mid-2000s feud, I’d say, “I dunno, probably not.” Hell, watching this cold, I thought this might have been a retirement match for Kong, but no, she was active in 2015. I’ll grant you that my memory is poor, but so much of 2010s TNA (post-Hogan) slipped through my mind like a sieve. I never allowed it to keep any traction, because it was TNA and I “didn’t have to.” I probably saved myself a few headaches, but I also think I missed out on some good wrestling, and on seeing future mainstays of wrestling before they caught fire.
At any rate, this is certainly not to the level of their stuff from a decade prior, but Gail and Kong have great chemistry together and are still able to make something happen here. It’s the classic big/little dynamic, with a bit of
Rating: ***1/4
No Disqualification Career Threatening Match: Kurt Angle vs Eric Young (TNA Bound For Glory 2015)
I think most people would say that Kurt Angle’s final run in WWE a few years ago left a bit to be desired, especially considering how limited he had become in the ring, but hey, at least it wasn’t this.
The idea here is that Eric Young is a ruthless psycho who will go out of his way to reaggravate Kurt’s neck injuries, while Kurt fights for his career, in the metaphorical sense and in the sense that it’s part of the match stipulation. Now, Kurt was definitely washed at this point, and considering that he would leave TNA not long after this, it was reasonable to assume that he was basically done. You can see it in his physique, his movement, his age, he just don’t got it no more. It’s fine, it happens.
What I really don’t like is the whole show of it all here. Yes, Kurt is a broken down piece of meat and Eric Young is a real meanie, but Jesus, more than half this match is the histrionics and hand-wringing around Kurt reaggravating his neck after an EY piledriver. This is especially meaningless watching in 2023, but even in its context, this match is a boring, overwrought layup for Kurt, with EY playing the broadest BADDIE possible. Waste of my fuckin’ time.
Rating: *1/2
MJF is 2020s EC3, and I’m still not really over that. Now, between the two of them, MJF is the better worker in almost every respect, and history has proven him right, but it’s wild to go back to the heyday of the EC3 character and just see the same beats again in a different guy so soon afterward.
The remixing of past popular wrestlers is a big talking point among fans today, especially with the advent of guys like LA Knight and Ricky Starks (I apologize for putting them in the same sentence), with accusations levied at anyone who remotely resembles the top stars of the past. That’s one thing, but to me, what really sticks in my mind about comparing MJF and EC3 is both how blatant the copy seems, but also, and much like with the above examples, how it ultimately doesn’t matter.
The first time I ever heard of MJF, well before AEW even existed, I just wrote him off as an EC3 knockoff, right down to the name. Watching EC3 in this match, so much of the performance of the character hits the same notes as MJF: Cocky, young, rich heel that is somehow beloved by the crowd; expressive and stooge-like heel character in the ring; they even kind of look similar. As much as guys like Drew Galloway were able to use TNA/Impact as a testing ground for themselves en route to greater success elsewhere, EC3 feels like someone trying the MJF gimmick altogether out before grafting it onto a different, better guy.
And as I’ve said, although it bugs me that I don’t see people talk about this very much (there’s that memory hole again), it really doesn’t matter. Not only has MJF taken this character far beyond where EC3 was ever able to, but in the past several years, EC3 has torpedoed any momentum his career ever had with baffling choices and wrongheaded associations, showing him to be another bust-in-the-making. I don’t really have a grand point to this, I just wanted somewhere to write about these two and their interpretations of the same character, a phenomenon that will always recur in wrestling.
Bad match.
Rating: **
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