Red's Wrestling Blog

This was an action packed episode, covering two nights worth of events (the 26th and 27th Flashing Summer Tour shows). The biggest takeaways from the first night included Hijo del Pantera winning a good looking four-way by pinning the Cruiserweight Champion in a match that also included Seiki and Kodama, Enfants Terribles picking up a good win over Pegaso and Tonsho, and a trio of Inaba, Soya, and Kondo beating Alejandro, Kaz, and Kono. Night two saw Seiki take out Honda Ryuki, Saiki get another strong singles win, the Enfants get another win, Andy Wu get back a win in triple threat action by pinning Kaz (Pantera was the third man), and Alejando, Inaba, and Kono beat Tanaka, Ryuki, and Shuji to close things. Nothing here was truly major, but for house show stuff getting us ready for the show on 9/1 (tomorrow by the time this posts to the blog) it was well worth the time. I watch this show every week and enjoy it every time. I do wish that they'd show at least one full con

Match from NOAH N-1 Victory 08/21 1.Hijo del Wagner Jr vs Mochizuki *** Thoughts: Mochizuki is the most exciting import name of the N-1 for me. Wagner, despite being decent, is the least exciting. I give the Wagner boy props as this was better than expected and this truly was good but it still simply wasn't enough to make the match required viewing. Skip this one.

Week of 08/18-08/24 1.Murphy vs Bryan ***1/2 WWE Smackdown Very good stuff here. Part of why I will always be a fan of Bryan is his willingness to put someone over. Murphy could easily be a main event player if they book him correctly and a win over the American Dragon here should be a big part of that. Now, will WWE fuck this up, though? We'll have to wait and see. 2.Captain's Challenge Elimination Rules Tag: Team Oney vs Team Gulak ***3/4 WWE 205Live The cruiserweights once again put up the TV match of the week here. Some of the language used by the commentary team have me fearing that there might be more weight to the rumors that the show is being blended with NXT soon, though. Perhaps I'm over reading it. Anyway, this was very enjoyable stuff and worth checking out. I just wish they had refrained from the backstage cutaways. That said, it was still a great cluster and this is a WWE product so I can't be too picky. 3.Street Fight: LA Park vs Havoc **1/4 ML

Matches from Wrestle-1 Flashing Summer 08/01 1.Strong Hearts vs Hijo del Pantera, Inaba **** 2.W1 Tag Titles: Enfants Terribles vs Soya, Kondo ***1/2 Thoughts: There's a reason why frequent visitors to this blog might have noticed that W1 gets a lot of coverage and these two matches are a good example of why that is. Despite constantly pumping out hits, they aren't getting nearly enough attention. Still, I love their content so much that their weekly show is the only one I've been watching consistently. That says something. The Strong Hearts match kept the T-Hawk/Inaba story moving and was another fantastic match from the OWE boys. Pantera continues to be one of my favorite roster members and Inaba is growing on me in this role. The main event ended things on a high note. Ashino is the company ace and really needed something better to do after failing in the Grand Prix so putting the tag belts on him is a smart move. I'm not 100% sure if this is meant as an

Match from NOAH N-1 Victory  08/23 1.Go vs Marufuji ****1/4 Thoughts: This is my favorite N-1 series match so far with both working their asses off. The end stretch in particular was hot but the build toward it was entertaining as well. Check this one out for sure!

When Kenny's on, he's one of the best talkers in the game. His promo that kicked off the week's episode rocked. Marty reference. Meltzer confirmed to me that his contract is ending soon. The SCU stuff was fun, and the trios match between them and A Boy & His Dragon + A Lost Boy should be good. I have SCU taking the win. Why was Kaz at Chuck e cheese on his own, why did he use a kid's tea set to take a shot, and should I call the cops? Taya and Johnny -insert random name here- make another appearance. Still expecting them to be involved on the show at some point and perhaps Johnny will be a partner for Jericho for the TNT debut. Speaking of shit bags, this morning I walked the dogs but found out that the thing that has the bags had been messed up due to the strong winds overnight and the bags had been blown away. Parkour! North Carolina will get a TV event. Good choice. Jericho closed the episode with a great promo. BTE is always must-see, so just

This one deserves not only a watch but also for you to read about the story behind the scenes, too.

So, today we had our next session. After getting her Pokemon back from Nurse Jenny, she spent $10 buying a Pokeball. She then went back out of town to see if she could find any wild Pokemon. She drew a Diglet from the random Pokemon pile. Using a Pichu to weaken it she managed to catch it without issue. She than ran into the same trainer from the last session who gave her info on the Tori Gym Leader and her contact info (she put it in her fake phone) to contact her for future battles (similar to what you see in Gold/Silver). Upon return to Tori Town, A. went straight to the gym and challenged the gym leader, Feza. He had a much stronger Pokemon, a Pidgeotto, which knocked out her Pichu and Rattata. They did just enough damage, though, and she finished off Feza with her Pidgey to earn the Wing Badge and $50. She finished the session by returning her Pokemon to the Pokecenter for healing.

Match from CHIKARA Summer Night City 1.Rory vs Huckabee *** Thoughts: While this one wasn't must-see, it was still a good, short contest between these two technicians. Huckabee in particular is very underrated and Rory is far too often forgotten in favor of his brother. Consider this is you want something quick and enjoy this style of wrestling. Overall Rating: 70/100%

Match from Wrestle-1 Tour Symbol 07/18 1.Strong Hearts vs Inaba, Hijo del Pantera, Koji **** Thoughts: I obviously caught the clipped version of this one on their weekly series but I wanted to take the chance to watch the full contest. There's one or two others from a more recent show I need to do that for, too. Frequent visitors here know my love for both the Strong Heats and Wrestle-1 in general so this was required viewing for me. Note that Inaba is set to challenge T-Hawk for the top belt in soon and this was actually the first in-ring encounter between the two. So, that's pretty cool. It sometimes feels like first time encounters are rare in the business these days until you look a bit closer. They did well to build up the title defense and all of the other individual standoffs played out nicely, too. Once the speed picked up, this was elevated from a very good match into four star territory. Had they added another two minutes or so it could have been even bet

Match from Gym Hercules 07/13 1.Ricky Marvin, Puma King vs Arez, Latigo **** Thoughts: Knowing that these four are great workers is one thing but even I didn't expect this to be as awesome as it was. Arez and Ricky were the standouts but Puma and Latigo more than played their roles well, too. Anyone who enjoys lucha libre needs to go watch this one!

Match from GCW Joey Janela's Spring Break 3 1.Invisible Man vs Invisible Stan NR Thoughts: You need bad boy vision to see this one. Just a heads up before you click the video. Also, for anyone who somehow missed the news...Bryce is indeed a god! This crowd is fucking awesome, too. Now, I don't rate comedy stuff but this really is something that all fans should see. As long as you don't have your head too far up Cornette's ass, you're guaranteed to have a good time.

So, one of my kids loves Pokemon. Followers of the blog know I have a fondness for roleplaying games so I am always looking for ways of showing my little spawns the way of the die. That said, recently I have made a new system specifically for a Pokemon based game. We are about to start our second session and I wanted to keep a journal of the basic events etc. For anyone that might be curious I indeed will post the rule book here when I get the chance. Note that I don't care to put my kid's names here in the blog so I'll just use an initial instead. SESSION ONE A. arrives in Angel Port. She was sent to Pyr Island by her parents so that she can go on a Pokemon adventure. When she arrived, Professor Spruce, an old family friend, gave her a Pichu and two Pokeballs as well as a map that showed her current location and the next destination. He faced her in her first battle with his Eevee. She won and also received $5 (I use play money, of course). She spent little tim

Match from NOAH N-1 Victory 08/20 1.Masa vs Sugiura ***1/2 Thoughts: I admittedly thought this would be a bit better but it was still a very good contest between the two. While it did lack in the epic department, fans of the NOAH style will still likely enjoy this one, too. Check this out when you have a moment.

Card: 0.Private Party vs Gueros del Cielo This should be a fun way to get things started. With the announcement of Private Party versus the Bucks having a rematch of their HOG contest for TNT expect Private Party to take the win. 1.Shida vs Riho I heard that the winner of this one will take on the battle royal winner to crown the first AEW Women's Champ. I'm a bit torn on who gets the nod here but with Kenny being officially announced for a DDT return with Riho as his partner once again I could see Riho winning this AND the title match and bringing the belt with her. 2.Women's Casino Battle Royale Baker wins this one. I'm not sure who the surprises will be but Lita is one possibility and AAA and TJP names are also likely. If they are going to make Baker the inaugural champion like many think than perhaps change the predicted outcome of the above match and set up Baker versus Shida for TNT. 3.Darby vs Janela vs Havoc I'm torn here. Janela would have seeme

Kenny Omega teased a return to DDT recently and it looks like we officially know when it will happen. November 3rd, Kenny will team with Riho to take on Honda and Miyu. Rejoice! Note that the all major DDT Championships in their umbrella system (including the KO-D Openweight, Princess of Princess, UnionMAX, and Independent World Junior Heavyweight belts) will also be defended on the show and that Chris Brookes will be making his return here, too.

Match from PWM 07/21 1.Latigo vs Dragon Bane vs Arez ***1/2 Thoughts: This was smooth, innovative lucha action featuring three of Mexico's best. The technical showcase in the first half and the spotfest endstretch made this quite the show and my only real knock is that the run time was a few minutes too short. Still, you'd be hard pressed to find many sub-10 minute matches better than this one this year so give it a click.

Match from Big Japan Osaka Surprise 42 Strong World 1.BJW Strong Heavyweight Title: Okabayashi(c) vs Nomura ****1/4 Thoughts: The current king of supersized meat bags defended his gold here against the underrated Nomura. No frills, no bullshit, no this was just two guys beating the shit out of each other in glorious fashion. Big Japan continues to be one of the best promotions in the world and their buzz lately has been growing as a result. This fantastic, near MOTYC clash was well worth the time and I encourage fans who missed out to go give it a click ASAP!