Saturday 28 March 2015

Catching up with 2010s WWE (#1)

So Wrestlemania is tomorrow. I remember watching last year's event and being really optimistic the next day. I haven't really followed WWE since around 2009/10, but last year it looked like they were set to go on a great run and I was as excited about current WWE as I'd been in a long time. Then it kind of all went straight to shit and I fell away again. There have been other points this decade where I've been drawn in again for spells, like around Money in the Bank 2011 and around 'Mania time last year, but I always fall away pretty quick. I know I've missed a bunch of great stuff, though. I mean, trying to go back and catch up with everything and watch a ton of TV is a fool's errand, but enough people whose opinions I listen to have talked up plenty of matches over the last five years that at least sound interesting on paper. This won't be an everyday thing, I'll basically just watch something whenever and write words about it, sometimes with multi-week breaks in between. I also don't plan on watching much of guys that I don't actively enjoy. So Edge and Chris Jericho probably won't show up very often, while there might be a few seven minute Mark Henry TV matches.


Dean Ambrose v Seth Rollins (Falls Count Anywhere) (RAW, 8/18/14)

Pretty great ECWish propfest brawl. I actually watched more than just a couple matches from last year (well, until June), at least enough that I felt like I had an idea of who I thought was good, and Ambrose was up there with guys like Virus and Hechicero as being my favourite guys in wrestling. He did something in every match I saw him in that I thought was awesome, and there was more of that here. He's someone that the execution nuts would tut-tut at because just about everything he does looks wild and sloppy, but that's why I like him so much. A dropkick is something that usually looks pretty, but when Ambrose does it it's like a dropkick you'd see in a street brawl. All of the big spots here looked great. Ambrose licking his lips and hurling a stack of chairs in the ring was total Chainsaw Charlie, and the big Liger Bomb onto said stack of chairs was something straight out of the Cabana/Homicide feud. All it needed was Ambrose trying to blind someone with bleach. Loved Ambrose's dive after running across the tables, the wipeout on the double cross body was one of the best I've seen, and Rollins' backflip bump off the rebound lariat was equally great (and didn't look ridiculous at all). Finish is kind of gimmicky, but I dug it all the same. I assume they were taking Ambrose off TV for a while after this, so him getting literally curb stomped into rubble was a cool way to do it. There can't have been too many WWE TV matches from last year better than this, surely?

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