Opinion
Top 5 Matches: Week Ending 6/24/2018
Another week, another Top 5. The winner from last week might come as a small surprise, but in a very close vote that was a 4-way tie for a while, finally we had a decisive winner. AJ Styles vs Shinsuke Nakamura at Money in the Bank, pulled off the win.
So even though there were 3 NXT matches, we see a main roster winner…I wonder if that says anything?
Well let’s not read too much into things and just get to this week’s matches. I didn’t have as much time as usual, so I’ll be doing a general overview instead of play by play style match descriptions.
5. Raw Intercontinental Championship Match: Seth Rollins (c) vs Dolph Ziggler
Seth comes off his first defense where he needed to visibly cheat, but maintains the ‘fighting champion’ ideal and declares an open challenge. Both Dolph and Drew McIntyre come out, but as we see, Dolph is the one to enter the match.
This was a fairly standard match for both, where they bumped hard and Ziggler focused on the injured knee that Rollins sold through most of the match. Ziggler managed to dodge the Blackout the entire match and it wasn’t until McIntyre got on the apron, that we saw the interesting finish.
I’m only saying it’s interesting because it was effectively the same way Rollins retained the previous night, but Karma bit him in the trunks. So it’s not a Fame-Asser or Superkick that wins the match, it’s a roll up with a handful of tights. And we have a title change on Raw!
Winner: Ziggler via Roll Up
Rating: *** 1/4
4. Jinsei Shinzaki 25th Anniversary Show Sendai Girls World Title Match: Chihiro Hashimoto vs DASH Chisako
Jinsei (aka Hakushi in WWF) is the current President of Michinoku Pro and co-founder of Sendai Girls, so the show had a mixture of male and female wrestlers. This match is important because the Sendai Girls World Title got vacated after Ayako Hamada was arrested on the drug charges.
Now I’m not well versed in Sendai Girls, so I’m not sure why DASH got this shot, but Chihiro is a former champion, so it makes sense for her to be in this spot. However, even though DASH isn’t a very decorated wrestler and seems to have been a tag team specialist for the first 10 or so years of her career, she put up a valiant effort in this match. The match was extremely competitive and aside from a couple hiccups, was very enjoyable.
DASH hit a rope assisted German Suplex from the corner, as well as numerous strikes and crucifix pin attempts. Thanks to my lack of exposure with this product, I can easily say the match could’ve gone either way, but once DASH looked to hit a point of desperation, I figured the more experienced wrestler would pull this off. After a damn good match, Hashimoto finishes the match with a German Suplex Hold, to win the vacant Sendai Girls Title.
Winner: Hashimoto via German Suplex Hold
Rating: *** 3/4
3. Lucha Underground Championship Match: Matanza Cueto vs Pentagon Dark (c)
Antonio Cueto, seems to be trying to establish his control over the new temple by unleashing a threat onto the champion that he has yet to defeat. Pentagon is 0-2 against Matanza, does he finally break the losing streak?
We see a fairly well paced, and enjoyable match that starts out on the outside. Vampiro continues to make comments about how Pentagon needs to give into the Evil and stop pandering, and almost on cue, Pentagon misses a chop into the post to give Matanza an opening.
Matanza keeps the advantage for a while, just overpowering Pentagon. However, Mr. Cero Miedo doesn’t care and slowly makes his comeback. Eventually hitting a few superkicks, into two Mexican Destroyers and finally stunning the monster long enough to end the match with his Package Piledriver.
Before Pentagon can collect his arm, Antonio walks out with some key, which gives Matanza enough of a second wind to get out of the ring and apologize to his father. I guess, more to come on that one…right?
Winner: Pentagon via Package Piledriver
Rating: *** 3/4
Honorable Mentions
Smackdown Gauntlet Match: Samoa Joe vs Rusev vs Daniel Bryan vs Big E vs The Miz
Winner: Rusev via Accolade
Rating: *** 1/4
MLW Fusion 20,000 Bounty Match: Brody King vs Shane Strickland
Winner: Strickland via High Knee Strike
Rating: ***
AJPW All Asia Heavyweight Championship Match: Ryoji Sai (c) vs Yoshitatsu
Winner: Sai via Sidmouth
Rating: ** 3/4
2. 205 Live Triple Threat: Buddy Murphy vs Hideo Itami vs Mustafa Ali
After interfering in the match two weeks ago, Mustafa and Buddy get the chance to exact some revenge on Hideo.
This match was a slightly different Triple Threat. We didn’t see a lot of “getting rid of one person” and having a rotating series of 1 on 1s. There were quite a few times when all three were trying to get in offense, some even becoming the victims of a convenient duck out of the way. Buddy threw Mustafa over his head, so Hideo was on the receiving end of an X Factor and well as Buddy ducking under a Backfist, so Hideo makes contact with Mustafa’s face.
A very fun and fast paced match, we see Ali land a Spanish Fly from the announce table to the floor on Murphy, but Itami manages to take the advantage. A well placed Hestiation Dropkick dazes Ali, so Itami can remove the bottom turnbuckle. Setting things up nicely for one more Hestiation Dropkick, and Murphy is still on the outside unable to break up the pin.
If Hideo gets a shot at the Cruiserweight Championship before his rumored date over in NOAH, that could be an interesting wrinkle if Itami gets a title run just to effectively show off success in WWE.
Winner: Itami via Hestiation Dropkick into Exposed Turnbuckle
Rating: **** 1/4
1. NJPW Kizuna Road IWGP Jr Heavyweight Championship: El Desperado vs Hiromu Takahashi (c)
Hiromu’s first defense as champion is an old rival, and someone who got a win on him in the BOSJ. So there’s some nice history between these two, to add a layer.
We see Hiromu walk to the ring with a guitar case, and as a small swerve when he opens it up, it’s got a bouquet of flowers, which he presents to Desperado. Despy was skeptical but eventually took them, and then hit Hiromu with them as soon as he turned around.
This match took a while to build up. They spilled outside fairly quickly, and repeated use of the guitar case,chairs, guardrails and Hiromu attempting his long running dropkick spot one too many times. Thankfully we all know by now that Japanese referees are very liberal with their decision to start to the 20 count. So we don’t really get even a hint of count out possibility here, but it spills outside almost as soon as they get back in the ring.
We see multiple heel tactics employed by Desperado to try and pick up the win. Even his tag partner Yoshinobu Kanemaru shows up and slides in a chair. Funnily, this causes Bushi to come out to help Hiromu and that has to be the loudest pop I’ve ever heard for Bushi.
Either way, Hiromu fights through the multitude of short cuts taken by Desperado and manages to pull off a few big moves, into his Time Bomb, to retain.
Winner: Hiromu via Time Bomb
Rating: **** 1/2
Well this is a difficult week for me to vote. We’ve got a few promotions that aren’t on the Top 5 often, as well as a bunch of familiar faces that have become almost synonymous with Top 5 work. So I guess I’ll go with the match I found the most enjoyment out of, which would be, 205 Live Triple Threat: Buddy Murphy vs Hideo Itami vs Mustafa Ali.
It was a nicely done Triple Threat, didn’t follow the usual formula, and it’s nice to see Itami get a little momentum.
So everyone else, make you opinion known, comment, e-mail, sky writing, Twitter trains of doom…I don’t know. Just – Always Use Your Head
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Opinion
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Launched in 2017, the Chairshot Radio Network presents you with the best in sports, entertainment, and sports entertainment. Wrestling and wrestling crossover podcasts + the most interesting content + the most engaging hosts = the most entertaining podcasts you’ll find!
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MONDAY - Bandwagon Nerds (entertainment & popular culture)
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Opinion
AJ’s Top 3 Favorite SummerSlams
AJ is back with his annual opinion article, and this time the SummerSlam buzz got him wondering about his personal Top 3.
It’s been a while since I have done any form of writing and SummerSlam is this Saturday. Of all the SummerSlams I’ve seen over the years; which ones are my favorites? While it’s not a revolutionary idea, I figured everyone loves to debate favorites of well, anything. Don’t worry though because this isn’t just going to be pure recency bias. I’ve watched the majority of them so with the ones I put on the list, it hit me more in some way shape or form whether it was story, a really good match or it just felt like a solid event.
At least this proves WWE is trending in a good direction for me, when it gets the ol’ brain juices flowing just because a show is around the corner!
#3: 2022 (Ol’ Brock Lesnar Has A Farm)
Starting off the show, we get Bianca looking for a rematch against Becky from last years SummerSlam and it was better than the 21 second affair that everyone claims was a squash. This time Bianca holds her own and beats the Man in a fairly decent match, good way to get the event started. Next up is the heat seeking missile, Logan Paul against the former heat seeking missile because, well he wasn’t cut out for it and wasn’t a guy in everyone’s eyes, The Miz. After they had their blow off at Mania with Logan coming out on top which… isn’t awful, I just don’t like Logan Paul because he has that dude bro aura and swagger to make him more hateable than any other person on the card. Which I suppose is his gimmick…so…kudos?
First Championship match is for the US Championship and it’s as expected that in Theory, he should never beat someone to the caliber of Bobby Lashley which is no surprise. Dominik and Rey still back when Dom wanted the good fight against the Judgement Day before joining them later. The former Colts players, which they hammered it dahn in this match up showed that the canal swimming, trash talkin’, podcastin’, current RAW Color Commentatin’ goofball we all love, Pat McAfee came out on top again Bum Ass Corbin.
Usos putting the Street Profits on lockdown in the penitentiary since I believe this was peak Bloodline with the belt collecting and running all of WWE. Liv beat Ronda Rousey which isn’t astonishing but it’s not something people had on their bingo cards for anything with WWE so it was a nice little shock factor. The most memorable part of the night is obviously the Main Event, Lesnar brings the tractor, Roman catching the Microphone and Brock stands on top of the vehicle. Damn good match that showed off what they do in the ring since Roman caught his stride as the main bad guy and Brock… liked people after all of this? That is still a weird statement in my head. Brock being a good guy people person. If Liv wasn’t on bingo cards for wrestling, that is not on bingo cards in any aspect of life really.
That is more of the event that had solid matches and story going for it. No weird double count out, multiple people involved, 5 tag matches on the card. Things made sense and weren’t convoluted, had shocking moments that were great to see like Liv actually getting a title defense and there were the results we all expected at the time like Theory losing in 4 minutes to Bobby Lashley.
#2: 2009 (Are You Ready for The Return?)
This event wasn’t that strong. It was strong with the star power involved in 2009 with guys like Rey Mysterio as Intercontinental Champion, Orton and Cena for the WWE Championship as it was becoming as stale as month old chips and CM Punk was facing Jeff Hardy before he ultimately returned to TNA at the beginning of 2010 after this PPV. For me, it’s not so much of the show itself, it was more of the memories because the Balai as our friends Chris Platt and Rey Cash like to call my brother and I, we were just coming back into wrestling and we were TNA Fans. We didn’t watch WWE that much really, it was just what came on after another channel had old ROH shows before they moved to three hours and swallowed the 8pm Eastern Slot. No, the reason why this has so many memories for me is three main reasons. First, Orton and Cena. They have had their rivalry since the beginning it seems, being each others foils like Hogan and Piper before them and there had to be a stipulation where if Randy was Counted Out or DQ’d, he’d lose the championship regardless. This was prime Viper Randy and the obvious joke we had of Super Cena where he very rarely lost, unless it was SummerSlam surprisingly enough.
Number two reason was CM Punk and Jeff Hardy. Hardys known for the Ladder and TLC matches in the past and this being the penultimate match for this feud and it was a banger of a match. If you didn’t know Punk before, it was a great introduction to his wrestling. I used to like Punk a lot because of this match because he could talk, wrestle… and not insanely personal with things in wrestling. In all seriousness, this was a great match. Ultimate risks, high reward for Punk grabbing the World Heavyweight Championship and he was given his next feud because of the final boss of SmackDown at that time. Thanks, Teddy Long.
The main and final reason though why this match gave me the memories flowing back is more of the fact that one of my closest and longest termed friends of 23 years, also loves wrestling. Back when we were younger, he’d do MoCap videos on YouTube with his figures. We’d have friends come over for parties at his house and we’d do the one thing WWE always told us not to do and that was try it at home. He was always stronger than me, I was always more charismatic. He had the power aspect and did things with brute force, I could talk my way out of trouble with parents if we did something wrong. There was always one thing that our respective mother’s always called us though… it’s on the tip of my tongue… oh right, ‘Degenerates’.
As soon as we were called that, we kind of parodied the DX line. I was limber enough to do the HBK pose and do a Superkick before it became the new DDT and he would just Spinebuster people and knew how to do the water spit. So what do you think was the main reason we even ordered this PPV for his 13th Birthday? I think the two guys we were pretending to be were set to return on a tank and toss out some glow sticks. The return of DX, Shawn Michaels coming back after Mania with Triple H to deal with the Legacy problem was an amazing return for them and made everything so much fun.
So we have the solid card and this one has a personal story… what’s my number one SummerSlam? Is it personal? Well yes but not going into that. Is it a good card? To me, it was a phenomenal card! Is it memorable? Seeing how wrestling fans still mention at least three matches to this day.
#1: 2005 (Octopus in the Washer, Lover’s Quarrel and Where the F%#$ is Vickie?)
Quite possibly some of the best matches I’ve seen and one that was just the most hilarious moments of overselling in wrestling history, I know why I love this SummerSlam but it’s also a really good card at the same time. Redacted beats Orlando Jordan in 25 seconds for the US Title and they made jokes about it like, he can make a coffee faster than he beat Orlando and stuff like that, it’s pretty funny. Angle getting sick of Eugene’s antics for his Gold Medal was also a great bit they had play up, the Year long feud of Randy Orton and Undertaker was still going on where Orton comes out on top this time around to get the win back from Mania, Jericho returning for the match with Cena in a whole promotional thing for each other’s groups, Fozzy for Jericho and the Chain Gang doing Bad, Bad Man for Cena leading up to a match for the WWE Championship. JBL won a 20 man battle royal on SmackDown to win the Championship…… Opportunity to face the newest member of SmackDown, Batista but the three main matches that a lot of people talk about to this day; Edge vs Matt Hardy, Rey vs Eddie for Dominik and Hogan vs HBK in the Main Event.
I have reasons to enjoy the Hardy/Edge match but it looked like a real fight, it really made us believe that Matt Hardy was going to kill Edge because real names were dropped during this tirade from Hardy. It wasn’t Edge and Lita, it was Adam and Amy. Matt was so dead set on beating the hell out of Edge that they made a situation into gold and it was a great moment for this match to happen, I believe it was also an Unsanctioned Match too which added the intensity until matt got concussed and knocked senseless that it looked like he couldn’t fight for anything but the build up was what made it seem like a marque match. It made it feel real, it made it feel awesome and it made it feel personal.
Eddie kept tormenting Rey Mysterio about Dominik not being Rey’s but Eddie’s for the summer. That’s all you heard from Eddie being the weasel he was is hanging out with Dominik, making the world believe it’s his son and what not (Let’s not do a fast forward to today where he has the mullet, mustache and everything like Eddie) but they settle this in a Ladder Match where the top of it is a document for the custody of Dominik and my god, this match is better than it should have been. I expect nothing else from Eddie because the man hated having a bad match, Dom got involved and stopped Eddie, Vickie was late and stopped Eddie. The whole match was good it was just very weird with the premise but was a great match. I wonder if Rey regrets his decision to win the match now…
Octopus in a Washing Machine… those five words have resonated with Shawn Michaels’ performance in this match, forever. It was supposed to be an amazing match up between Hogan and Michaels, Icon vs Icon it said and suddenly Hogan’s back gives out, can’t do a trilogy of matches so we can only do the one and then pull out of everything after. This match was set up to be a classic and instead turned into the most unbelievable sell fest ever. A Hogan big boot caused Shawn to tumble 3 or 4 times, getting crotched on the ropes had HBK bouncing higher than he should have, being tossed out of the ring made it look like Shawn never broke his back in 1998 from how much he flopped and flipped around like crazy. It’s bad… or maybe even good that a lot of current wrestlers watched this match that went, “I can sell like that, I want to be a wrestler” and did. So good or bad, I don’t know but for some reason this PPV has always had a place in my heart for how memorable it was.
Those are my top three SummerSlams so far but who knows, 2024 has potential to maybe bump something or at least get me to consider a shift. Should be fun to see how the show plays out! What are some of your favorite SummerSlams?
About Chairshot Radio Network
Launched in 2017, the Chairshot Radio Network presents you with the best in sports, entertainment, and sports entertainment. Wrestling and wrestling crossover podcasts + the most interesting content + the most engaging hosts = the most entertaining podcasts you’ll find!
MONDAY - Bandwagon Nerds (entertainment & popular culture)
TUESDAY - Musical Chairs (music) / Hockey Talk (NHL)
WEDNESDAY - The Greg DeMarco Show (wrestling)
THURSDAY - Keeping the news ridiculous... The Oddity / Chairshot NFL (NFL)
FRIDAY - DWI Podcast (Drunk Wrestling Intellect)
SATURDAY - The Mindless Wrestling Podcast
SUNDAY - The Front and Center Sports Podcast
CHAIRSHOT RADIO NETWORK PODCAST SPECIALS
Attitude Of Aggression Podcast & The Big Five Project (chronologically exploring WWE's PPV/PLE history)
TheChairshot.com PRESENTS...IMMEDIATE POST WWE PLE REACTIONS w/ DJ(Mindless), Tunney(DWI) & Friends
Patrick O'Dowd's 5X5
Classic POD is WAR
Chairshot Radio Network Your home for the hardest hitting podcasts... Sports, Entertainment and Sports Entertainment!
Powered by RedCircle
Let us know what you think on social media @ChairshotMedia and always remember to use the hashtag #UseYourHead!
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