Category: Wrestling stuff

WTF is happening in TNA?

The Hardys set off on their ‘Expedition of Gold’!

TNA (aka IMPACT WRESTLING!) is in a major state of change, let’s get ya up to speed!

Jan 5th 2017: Anthem Sports announce they’ve majority control of the company.
• Dixie was demoted to ‘advisory board’ and still has a 5% minority stake.
• Billy Corgan, after contesting, accepted a buyout of his stake and is fully done with TNA.
• Jeff Jarrett (and his wife) returned to TNA as Executive Consultant, as well as his boy Dutch Mantell as Creative consultant. This means although Jason Brown is the CEO, Jarrett is pretty much in charge, and Dixie has no say.

What’s happening now?
Jarrett/Anthem have issued new contracts, like his old ones – to pay wrestlers ‘per day of taping’ rather than ‘per episode you appear on’. This is a major downgrade in pay – for example, say you filmed 6 episodes of impact over two days. At $10,000 per episode, you used to be paid $60,000. Now you’re being paid $10,000 per day, so you’re being paid $20,000 for the same work.

Jeez, what else?
The other stickler with the new contracts is that they want control over your independent bookings, AND to take a 10% cut. This is a slap in the face, as many wrestlers earn more working indy shows than in TNA.

Eh, won’t wrestlers just bail?
Yeah, that’s what’s happening. Contracts have expired and weren’t re-signed – The Hardys (oh man!), Drew Galloway, Mike & Maria Bennett & Jade so far.

Who’s definitely staying?
Bobby Lashley, Moose, Eli Drake, Davey Richards, Eddie Edwards and EC3 are all locked into contracts so they’ll be at the next set of tapings. (Davey Richards’s contract is expiring soon though)

How come they’re doing all this?
This is a *major* cost-cutting measure, and to lock down wrestlers so they can start touring again.

Didn’t they lose a lot of money the last time they started touring?
Yes, millions. Leaving Orlando was a massive financial mistake. Hopefully they won’t start touring soon.

What’s the good news to all of this?
Today they announced they’ve struck a TV deal in the UK with Spike UK! iMPACT returns to UK TVs on April 21st. Spike UK is an offshoot of Channel 5/Viacom, so this bodes well for getting back on Spike TV in the US. That’d be a big plus as they don’t get paid by PopTV. Also they’re saving a lot of money by paying talent less (lol!), so it will be easier to start turning a profit. Hopefully enough wrestlers stick around for people to keep watching. And for fans, Broken Matt has had a great run in TNA – it’d be amazing to see him in WWE (Matt’s been name-dropping multiple promotions, including New Japan)

They’ve also gotten rid of the Owl logo:

RIP Anthem Owl 2017-2017. We hardly knew ye.

March 2, 2017
TNA Total Access App Review

TNA Total Access! What is it?
TNA’s version of the WWE Network. Only available in UK/Ireland at the moment (it will be coming to more countries) £5 or €6/month

What platforms?
Android (Google Play), iOS (Apple Store), Apple TV, Amazon FireTV and your PC.

Three screenshots from my phone put side by side.

What do they have?
The last 3 impacts, all the PPVs from 2005-2015 (note 2013 & ’14 had 4 PPVs, and 2015 had 2), neither of the 2 2016 PPVs are up though. “Inside Impact” (the 20 minute impact discussion show) goes back to June 1st 2016, 17 “TNA Epics” which is their home video compilation series eg “Best of Jeff Hardy in TNA”, 29 x One Night Only specials.

How’s the stream?
• Honestly, pretty poor. I have really fast internet and it buffers a lot if you start jumping around. It really wants you to start from the start and leave it playing. Even at that it’ll start pausing.
• Resolution? Up to 720p, but the bitrate isn’t great. I wager you could get better rips illegally. The old PPVs do look nice – high quality DVD rips, but the 4:3 standard def PPVs are “double bar’ed” i.e it’s slightly squished 4:3 with a large TNA bar and small black or white bar.

This is a screengrab from my phone. Note 4:3 PPV is stretched and cropped a little, but still has small white bars on either side.

Stray Thoughts:
• When you sign up you get a wordpress user and pass, it’s really weird (because sure OSW’s site is made with wordpress!) so it feels a bit cheap lol.
• Although I signed up on my phone I can access it on the desktop (and other devices presumably.) My tablet had absolutely none of the app – it keeps crashing immediately 🙁
• I am impressed at the speed Anthem have been able to get all the best TNA footage digitised and ready for a streaming service.
• When I downloaded it yesterday it said it had between 500-1,000 downloads on GooglePlay

Is it worth it?
It depends how much you love TNA or how much use you’d get out of the back catalogue. I’d recommend holding off until they can sort out the bandwidth issue as I’m having a tough time watching Black Reign!

MYAH MYAH MYAHHHH!

One more thing, what do you think of Dixie being demoted from Chairman to “on the Advisory Board” for Anthem?
Great! She’s been with TNA for well over a decade and squandered too many chances. I’m kinda sad Billy Corgan got squeezed out because he seemed to genuinely care about building TNA and was prepared to go to court with a much bigger company (Anthem) to get control. (He’s since been paid/settled and is now out of TNA completely). I’ve hope with new people at the top of the TNA food chain, it has a chance to grow. I’m big fan of Jeff Jarrett but what fresh ideas for success he can bring to TNA management? Anthem has their work cut out for them reversing the negative brand connotation TNA has but they’re well aware with deep pockets! I really wish them the best. Also, give Josh Matthews & Pope the boot and bring in John & Wai! — Jay

January 6, 2017
NXT Takeover Brooklyn II

NXT Takeover Brooklyn II
August 20, 2016
Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn, New York

Austin Aries vs. No Way Jose
– Jose’s tee is “No Way -Jose”. That friggin’ hyphen. Does Jose say “No Way” a lot? 😛 I’m not a fan of his dance spot, it’s real house show gimmick and he got Aries to do it (at the Dublin house show anyway)
– nothing notable; crowd initially like Jose but get solidly behind the far more talented veteran. Aries hits a sunset flip powerbomb (no chance of Aloha’ing there) and Last Chancery for the submission.
– Itami hits the ring and out of nowhere hits the GTS! Wow I can’t believe they gave it away so quickly. Looking forward to their match in 2 months.

Ember Moon vs Billy Kay
– Australia’s Billy Kay looks like the alternate costume version of Eva Marie.
– Enjoyed Ember’s Milena mouth veil and gothic entrance; then she starts bouncing up and down as she’s excited, odd mix!
– NXT is this weird place where you have 10+ year veterans and developmental talent on the same card. This match is between two new signees having a highly scripted match. Couple of awkward exchanges and dodgy punches, the two didn’t gel well.
– Loved Ember’s top rope RKO/Stunner. Looked awesome, popped the crowd.
– Not high hopes for either wrestler.

Bobby Roode vs. Andrade Almas
– amazing entrance by Roode. He tried very hard not to mark out, basking in the love of the NXT crowd singing his entrance theme (already!!). Ya gotta love when WWE do things solely for it’s very hardcore fans and they reciprocate in kind.
– match got Andrade’s gimmick/personality over a bit (eg countering thrown to the outside by tangling himself in the ropes) but was more just a coming-out party for Roode
– match had nothing huge going on, Roode won clean with his pump-handle slam (minus the bumming)

– OCC (not OOC) reveal the CWC trophy, which is a metallic, bulbous penis.

The Revival (c) vs. Johnny Gargano and Tommaso Ciampa
– Revival are great at being old school rasslin’ heels (eg pulling someone off the apron) and Gargano/Ciampa warmed up to an exciting finish, tons of near falls that the crowd were really into; right team won I felt, Revival win with an inverted figure 4 and can face TM61 next probably.
– The match was WAY better than expected! Very impressive. Crowd gave the challengers a standing ovation afterwards.
– For a couple of seconds they tease a Ciampa heel turn but they didn’t. Good stuff.

– Jolly Rancher’s new slogan is “keep on sucking”. ha ha ha!

Asuka (c) vs. Bayley
– fantastic storyline match: Bayley was clearly in over her head vs Asuka. The champ enjoyed being in front, smiling as she controlled Bayley – which is almost a heel thing.
– Bayley would fight back, despite changing tactics, hulking up, and escaping the Asuka lock, she’d get repeatedly beaten down
– In the end, Bayley’s never-say-die attitude was kicked in the head (literally) and she went down for the 3.
– AWESOME storytelling, the loss gets Bayley over more (as a sympathetic underdog) and Asuka looks like a fucking killer.
– Great shot of Bayley’s mates Becky & Sasha heartbroken afterwards.
– Small point but Charlotte was not sitting near the babyfaces – awesome kayfabe.
– I expect Bayley to be called up any day now (she bloody worked Battleground last month wtf!) and since she was thoroughly outclassed there’s no need for a round 3/getting that 2nd women’s title reign – it’s been 3.5 years!

Samoa Joe (c) vs. Shinsuke Nakamura
– Shinsuke’s entrance was very cool, had the violinist play a little piece beforehand and along with the main theme.
– Joe’s street-Godzilla theme is also cool
– started off with Joe dominating with well, rest holds, more of a showcase transitioning into various submission holds. It’s pretty awesome to see how large his repertoire is.
– after 10 minutes or so it built up into big moves trying to score the win
– both men kicked out of each other’s finishes (Joe selling a broken jaw is great)
– Nakamura hit a top rope knee to the back of the head then a Kinshasa for the win and the NXT title, place goes nuts.

Overall: Very good Takeover special (they’re always great) but it’s getting harder for them to live up to the unmatchable high standards/expectations set by previous attempts; especially losing a lot of wrestlers to the ‘big leagues’. It really is a TNA 2013 show with Aries, Roode and Joe in singles matches! With Sami doing nothing on the main roster maybe he could pop down for the next TakeOver. A very easy 2hr35m watch, but not unmissable.

An #NXTTakeOver debut worthy of only one word…
Excited to see the future of @REALBobbyRoode in @WWENXT. pic.twitter.com/mq8V0X1O26

— Triple H (@TripleH) August 21, 2016

Not too hard to see who Roode modeled himself on!

SummerSlam 2016 video review coming next week! More info: OSW Update for August

August 21, 2016
Top 10 Imposter Wrestlers!

No disguise…for that double vision!
Time to delve into the depths of one of wrestling’s best worst gimmicks – IMPOSTER WRESTLERS!
As part of our new Fall Brawl ’95 episode!

Clicky to watch the rest of the episode 🙂 Are there any imposters we left out?

August 1, 2016
CWC CruiserWeight Classic Ep1

On June 22nd, WWE announced a WWE Network-exclusive new show, Cruiserweight Classic (CWC) that’ll air for 10 weeks every Wednesday after NXT, culminating with a live 2-hour special on September 14. A quick 3 weeks later, let’s see how their innoggeral episode went down!

Format & Setup:
32 man single-elimination tournament. This week was 4 random 1st round matches. Filmed at Full Sail University (i.e. perfect crowd for indy stars). Colour scheme is silver on purple. Graphics are *sploosh* Street Fighter style, making note of their nationality (awesome). Quick 10-second vignettes for each fighter to introduce themselves; otherwise they’re getting over by reputation but mostly it’s all in-ring. ROH-style, combatants are asked to shake hands beforehand. Replays are only shown after the bout, before the winner’s hand is raised. The hand-shaking had a storyline! 1st match) Shake hands 2nd) Don’t shake 3rd) Shake & pull in to trash talk 4th) Shake hands!

Commentary:
WWE gained serious brownie points with Mauro Renallo & Daniel Bryan. It’s a joy to hear them fully engaged in informing why you should care, and getting the talent over. They work off each other extremely well, only ever stumbling over each other twice, and will only get better. My favourite part was both marking out simultaneously to Alejandro Saez doing a shooting star press from the apron.

Matches:
Gran Metalik (Mexico) vs Alejandro Saez (Chile): Metalik is a luchador and the match showcased his highspots – which he executed perfectly and impressively. Saez got his shooting star press but this was all about Metalik. Good stuff!
Hoho Lun (China) vs Ariya Daivari (Iran; younger brother to WWE’s Shawn Daivari): So it’s WWE’s new market (‘babyface’ China) vs Terrorist! Yech! Lun is really green, he looked a bit terrified. Daivari played Daivari. I expect Lun to go farther than he should thanks to WWE breaking out into China.
Cedric Alexander (USA) vs Clement Petiot (France): ROH’s Cedric was showcased as a big babyface to get behind, crowd enjoyed him. Petiot is ripped and bulkier than other cruiserweights. He had some nice bigger-man offense in. They got over him being trained by Lance Storm, but I didn’t see any rat tail. Hmm… Cedric won his with Lumbar Check (Belly to back suplex into double knee backbreaker, lovely!)
Kota Ibushi (Japan) vs Sean Maluta (American Samoa): Ibushi is actually signed with WWE (having left DDT & NJPW earlier this year) so…yeah! Purple Kenta (as we call him due to his kicks, and purple jocks back in the day) is the favourite; crazy over and DB especially marked for his vicious kicks; Mauro loved his triangle moonsault (jump to the outside middle rope and moonsault). As Maulta is the nephew of Headshrinker Afa, they pushed the Reigns/Usos/Rock relation hard. Tons of impressive attacks like his standing moonsault splash and Pele kick to a top-roped opponent. Massive potential for him. Maluta was in a death spot (paired with Ibushi in his first WWE match) his big spot over the top rope was a little wibbley but his superkick ‘maybe I’ll get an upset’ near fall was good! Poor Cedric, he’s facing Ibushi in the last 16 – would’ve loved to see him progress farther.

Other points to note:
I’m very impressed how WWE have created an alternative for themselves, by themselves. This is a fantastic mix of familiar but different. WWE’s production values but new graphics, commentators and wrestlers. Almost everyone here has never been seen in a WWE ring (I’m gathering Tajiri and Brian Kendrick might be for older fans).
Only negative is that this is pretty completely in-ring-based (i.e. no real characters or storylines) so it’d be difficult to get invested in most of the talent (as half of them will be gone after one match). As a positive it makes you feel like a talent scout!

Overall: SO MUCH fan service for hardcore fans – indy wrestlers, commentary, Street Fighter graphics! If watching indy stars in WWE interests you, go watch it! Go watch it anyway, just to see something completely different from WWE. Mauro & D-Bry are magic together, have tremendous credibility, natural chemistry and enthusiasm. They should be calling RAW. 52 minutes. Who do you think will win the tournament?

Next week’s matchups:
Tajiri (Tadgers! Japan) vs Damien Slater (Australia)
TJ Perkins (TNA’s Manik; Philippines) vs Da Mack (Germany)
Mustafa Ali (Pakistan) vs Lince Dorado (Puerto Rico)
Akira Tozawa (Japan) vs Kenneth Johnson (USA)

Shoutout to superbrah in the OSW shart! WHAT BARRRRRRRR is Cedric Alexander?

New OSW episode coming next week! More info: NoggerU.OSWreview.com

July 16, 2016
NXT Dublin Review! (14 June 2016)

NXT Dublin 14 June 2016

Yo! Here’s a quick write-up about last night’s NXT event at the 3 Arena. Thanks to James at MCD who comp’d our tickets! I’m no good at numbers but probably 4,000 were at it — not being full was great as in general you could get in and out in a few minutes. WWE have a deal with Three so they had to use this arena (as a WWE Network-only Developmental Show, a smaller one would’ve been preferable) so they closed off the entrance way side — but only the top section of seats were empty. More importantly, the crowd were rabid! The audience were into everything and everyone (except No Way Jose’s stop-match-to-dance spot) and sustained loud chanting throughout. Show kicked off about 7.30pm and finished at 9.45, including a 15m intermission. T-shirt-wise there were a TON of red Nakamura shirts and Balor Club shirts, a healthy dose of retro shirts (mostly nWo and Austin 3:16) and darest I say OSW shirts (which is so freakin’ awesome!). Shinsuke’s tees sold out immediately, and then Bálor’s (although half of the entire merch there was his!)

• Tye Dillinger v Hugo Knox
Tye cut a heel promo insulting Ireland’s draw against Sweden which drew heat, I was really impressed (Americans insulting Europeans about sports usually gets derisively dismissed). He shouted “you’re Ireland!” when beating up Hugo Knox. Who is Hugo Knox? Not Mike’s brother, that’s who. He got “who are ya?” chants. He’s an English Brakkus, a former Port Vale goalkeeper, and is ripped to the gills, congrats on the Roidy Magoo award! Still pretty green but moved well despite being absolutely huge. Perfect 10 has go-away heat from V1 but the crowd absolutely loved him. Sadly I’ll report it sounded like maybe 50/50 smarks and marks — I reckon a lot of smarks don’t do house shows. Silly to have Tye as a heel. Peeps brought 10 signs! Knox won with a split-legged moonsault, which the crowd didn’t appreciate.

• Wesley Blake v Andrade Cien Almas
Gosh it’s like a “great value” version of Trent Baretta and Sin Cara. Blake got (tag partner) “Murphy’s better” chants. His outfit was like a refresher bar and tassles – in the 80s he’d be face but is a heel in 2016. Thought the star on his arse said “BLAM!” but I think it was Blake, lol. Andrade (CMLL’s La Sombra) played a white-meat babyface Mexican who gets fired up from the crowd. His offence looked good but nobody cares about his character (and so his matches) yet. Andrade won after double knees in the corner. That move was done multiple times throughout the night, dammit d’lo!

• Sawyer Fulton & Alexander Wolfe v American Alpha
WHO? Two Mad Max scruffy-looking fellas. Wolfe (the blonde one) is German so the crowd heckled them about it. So that’s three matches in a row with at least one nobody/new guy that’s not over in it – i.e. people that need to be doing house shows. We’d great seats (on the ‘hard camera’ side) with only one tiered row in front of us but whenever stars started coming out (ie American Alpha) the 7 foot dude in front of me started standing for the entrances. And then the 7 foot guy beside Steve started doing the same!
Jordan and Gable were CRAZY OVER. They just stopped for a while to let the crowd chant the There’s No Limit song as well as the Kurt Angle song to their names. Gable looked so smooth and technical and sold a lot so Jordan could run wild, everyone lapped it up. Mad Maxes had some dodgy offense – the best/worst bit was Alexander Wolfe did these running fall-down splashes, and the crowd were agast at such a shit move – “WHAT WAS THAT?” chants! AA won with the Grand Amplitude and everyone was happy. Dash & Dawson showed up and talked smack, tried to ambush the faces but Dash was put in a double single ankle lock (Gable and Jordan with one ankle each) and they scarper.

• No Way Jose v Austin Aries
V1 said he’d be at the bar but after hearing No Way Jose’s theme but stayed for Austin Aries. Jose is supposed to be face but as soon as his entrance is done the crowd are solidly for Aries. Jose stops the match for a dance spot (he needs a definitive dance move if it’s to get over, like Fandango’ing had the pointy arms thing) and the crowd entertained it but gave massive cheers to Aries for attacking him to end the spot. I imagine Aries takes his craft seriously, I wonder if he was pissed to have do this Punch & Judy house-show shit. Aries looked extremely crisp (as he should, he’s amazing) and Jose didn’t have much, Aries lead this match. Someone gave Aries a “you can’t wrestle” chant, Aries shot him daggers after chain-wrestling Jose. Hilarious. A Double misses his discus elbow and Jose pins him with a schoolboy, fuck that.

• NXT Women’s Champion Asuka v Peyton Royce
Asuka got a great reaction but not as loud/sustained as I’d hoped. She’s gorgeous and a bad-ass. That she used to work for Xbox and Nintendo only sweetens the deal! Peyton really needs work, they did the ‘repeat the spot’ bit more than once as she loses the run of herself. As an Aussie, Peyton got “Knifey-Spoony!” chants, which was amazing. The champ got “Fuck ’em up Asuka, Fuck ’em up!” which is a popular one here. Casual swearing this side of the pond 🙂 Asuka won with her crossface chicken wing submission.

15m Intermission

Clicky for Part 2 incl. Nakamura/Roode and Finn/Joe!

June 15, 2016
Every WCW world title change in 2000!

As seen in our WCW Slamboree 2000 episode! OSWreview.com/media/oswreview34
Latest update on the new OSW episode: OSWreview.com/osw-update-for-june
New Audio! Super OSW 64 Level 9, Jay’s videogame music show! OSWreview.com/super-osw-64-level-9

June 10, 2016
WWE 2K17 Goldberg Trailer

Pre-ordering can fuck right off though! Fairly certain David Arquette was one of the officers there 😛

There’s a cool little easter egg at the end, the sign that says “Suplex City”! Prob best not to remind people of WM XX’s Goldberg vs Brock match though!

Last year’s ad was a Terminator 2 parody (as multiple Arnies were in 2K16) and prior to that was Sting, and both are now in the WWE Hall of Fame, so things are looking good for Goldberg in the 2017 HOF.

https://twitter.com/MikeyShiota/status/737471067933941761

Curious though, what’s the last WWE game you’ve played?

May 31, 2016
Top 5 Worst Foreigner Stereotypes!

Foreigner stereotypes are an institution in wrestling! But which are the best of the worst?

From our Starrcade 94 Review! OSWreview.com/media/oswreview56
Latest Update on the next episode: OSWreview.com/update-2016-may

Any other racial stereotypes in wrestling to add to the list?

May 29, 2016
Every WWE Wedding Ever!

Yo! Here’s our segment from SummerSlam 91 showcasing every wedding from WWF/E! Who do you think makes the prettiest bride? I think AJ IS WHOPPER in a wedding dress!

Latest new schtuff on OSWreview:

Happy May 19th!

OSW May Update!

Super OSW 64 Level 8!

May 21, 2016