A big ol’ collection of this weekend’s matches, we’ll see which one ends up being the best…
Ratings
Bryan Danielson vs Andrade El Idolo (AEW Collision 10/21/23)
Rating: ***3/4
X Division Championship: Chris Sabin (c) vs KENTA (Impact Wrestling Bound For Glory 2023)
Rating: ***
Impact Tag Team Championship: The Rascalz (c) vs ABC (Impact Wrestling Bound For Glory 2023)
Rating: ***
Reviews
WWE Women’s Championship: Iyo Sky (c) vs Charlotte Flair (WWE Smackdown 10/20/23)
Personally, I’m a fan of a champion being featured on TV and having consistently good matches. Iyo is certainly not the only person in WWE doing that right now, but when it comes to that company, you can’t take it for granted.
Rating: ***1/2
2 Out of 3 Falls Match: Mistico vs Rocky Romero (AEW Rampage 10/20/23)
Lucha is my biggest blind spot as a wrestling fan, so I’m grateful for any direction towards it that following American wrestling affords me. I ended up getting into NJPW and puroresu at large almost by accident, by finding illegally uploaded shows on YouTube and just filling in the blanks as I went. It’s not an ideal approach, although I did have fun doing it, but now that I’m older and have less free time, I find it harder to do the same for CMLL, AAA, and Lucha history. If nothing else, this match made me do a bit of research about Mistico and CMLL.
I’m certainly happy that Mistico has at least one opportunity here to leave his previous US excursion in the past. This match with Rocky is a fairly good TV match; nothing especially amazing, as far as I could see, but Mistico carried himself well and came across like someone special (helped by his presentation and commentary talking points). Perhaps 2024 will be the year I find out more about wrestling south of the border…
Rating: ***1/4
Memphis Street Fight: Eddie Kingston vs Jeff Jarrett (AEW Collision 10/21/23)
This match has the greatest 5 second stretch of wrestling in 2023: Tony Schiavone refers to Karen Jarrett as “an evil bitch;” Jay Lethal hits a cutter to Kingston off the stage through a table; Tony Schiavone cries, “Holy smokes!” An absolute blast from start to finish.
Rating: ****
AEW World Tag Team Championship: Ricky Starks & Big Bill (c) vs Blackpool Combat Club (AEW Collision 10/21/23)
A really good tag main event that earned its length. Yuta is believable and fiery in the babyface-in-peril role, and you want a heel team like Bill and Rick to talk as much shit as they do. At some point, I thought to myself, “Big Bill is a good tag wrestler, why hasn’t he done that before?” and then had myself a wee little giggle.
Rating: ***3/4
AEW International Championship: Orange Cassidy (c) vs John Silver (AEW Battle of the Belts VIII)
As a former CHIKARA freak, I was always going to watch Fire Ant vs The Shard 2K23. Orange is back to his routine of solid TV defenses, and Silver is always game in these rare singles occasions. The stop-start nature of Dark Order’s involvement in AEW and ROH has worn me out over the past couple of years, and as such, there’s no bigger flatline to my interest than anything they are involved in. Hey, every promotion needs a low-card comedy gimmick, but they don’t even do comedy anymore, so Silver, Reynolds, and Uno have never felt less necessary than right now.
Rating: ***
AEW TBS Championship: Kris Statlander (c) vs Willow Nightingale (AEW Battle of the Belts VIII)
It speaks to Willow’s career-long character work as the bubbly, uber-positive babyface that seeing her work heel here feels morally wrong, like something no person should see. It sucks that it’s in front of a visibly yawning crowd, as she and Stat have to pull out every big spot to get them even a little into it, so the match seems worse than it actually is. I watch a lot of these matches on mute normally, but you really aren’t missing anything cutting the sound off for this one; if anything, it’s a bit less sad that way.
Rating: ***
Will Ospreay vs “Speedball” Mike Bailey (Impact Wrestling Bound For Glory 2023)
There’s a few wild moves in the back third of this (Speedball with a snappy hurricanrana pin, top-rope fisherman buster, Ospreay’s head-drop move) that nearly pushed this into 4-star territory, but ultimately, this is exactly what it looks like. I will say, I was afraid that this would be a lot more annoying, as both of these guys have their silly tendencies when allowed to go nuts, but this (by their standards) was fairly restrained. Destined to be loved by everyone looking for this sort of moves-based wrestling, and it’s a good one of those, but I certainly don’t have the feeling for this as I do for the Memphis Street Fight.
Rating: ***3/4
Impact World Championship: Alex Shelley (c) vs Josh Alexander (Impact Wrestling Bound For Glory 2023)
The phrase that occurred to me during this match, regarding Josh Alexander, is “frustratingly consistent.” Since he’s ascended to main event status in Impact over the last couple of years, and not dissimilar to what I said about the Ospreay/Speedball match, you always know what you’re getting with Alexander. A really good-not-great match.
Personally, I prefer the type of match that Alexander has to those out of Ospreay, for example, but I always end up expecting more from Alexander’s performance when I really shouldn’t. His match here with Shelley is full of fluid sequences, it escalates believably, and is ultimately satisfying, but I never end up feeling all that pulled in. Alexander is a great wrestler (as is Shelley), but this was another case of an Alexander match capping at “very good.” Consistency in a performer is great and it is totally working for Josh Alexander, I just need to remind myself to not expect more than that from him.
Rating: ***3/4
The Super Jr. Tag League has already begun, so get ready to see a lot of that in here starting tomorrow. Until then!
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