Greetings all Muta-marks,
It's your ol' buddy ol' pal Quarter Marshall here, typing out some wrestling stuff, sitting in my erstwhile fake podcast booth, eating nachos and sipping on wine. Ain't it fine. The Marshall doesn't have a whole-hell-of-a-lot on his mind, not a whole-hell-of-a-lot to share with you readers, but that's often what The Marshall says at the top, before rambling on for pages and pages or, worse, out loud for a damn half-hour or more. What's up with me? What's my perception of the current state of affairs in the multi-verse of Professional Wrestling?
Gee, but I'm so glad you asked.
First thing's first, Money in the Bank is on the very near horizon, but I don't really have a personal slant on the matter because I haven't watched any WWE programming for almost 2 months. (Exception: NXT Takeover.) From what I understand (on wwe.com) there will be ladder matches for both the World Title and the MitB case, which is cool. I might check back in for this event, or maybe just on Raw to catch the fallout, but it sure is tempting not to. Being WWE-free has opened up a lot more time in my schedule which I have been using very productively.
For instance...
Keeping up on NJPW. Something like 12 hours of the Top of the Super Jr.s Tournament kept me busy for a while, and then it was on to last weekend's Dominion. All kick-ass shows, highlighted by the Super Jr.s final. Interestingly, my second and third favorite matches from the tournament were the ones each of the finalists had against Jushin Liger. Dominion sported a solid card, and it was great from bottom to top. Okada stole the show in my opinion, but I don't really remember what he did, I just have a man-crush on him. He's sparkly.
Side note: Nakamura has the best entrance in the business.
Side leg-sweep note: This past Monday, prowrestlingtees.com started selling officially licensed NJPW gear. This is awesome because before it just wasn't possible to get New Japan gear in the States without paying huge shipping fees. However, I'm disappointed with the selection of t-shirts and am hoping they get more so that I can buy one that I like. Then I can wear it to the next WWE event and be a total wrestling hipster!
ROH's Best in the World event was also last weekend. It was the company's first ever live PPV (not to be confused with iPPV). I thought it came off great-- it looked cool, sounded cool, the crowd in Nashville was hot, and the wrestlers were totally on their game. Again, a solid card from bottom to top, but I'd like to give props to the Roderick Strong vs. Cedric Alexander submission match as being my personal favorite.
PWG's most recent release (which is now about 3 months old), Mystery Vortex 2. I won't get into details, as Poncho Man is still wading his way through the promotion's silver age, but suffice to say PWG is the most fun wrestling to watch, ever. The gimmick behind the Mystery Vortex annual show is that no matches are announced until the minute they happen. Even the locker room is in the dark until they're tapped to hit the ring.
Speaking of The Poncho Man, he and I got a chance to catch the return of Chikara, after seeing a badass rock concert and having a good drinky time in Eugene (I myself got nothing short of hammered). The event had it's highs and lows, but I'm sure we'll both stay glued to the product and look forward to whatever else they put out for a long time to come.
August is fast approaching, and we shouldn't be all dumb about coordinating a SCW meetup when Raw comes to town. Last time, Poncho and I were sitting in different sections, while Rusty was sitting across town on the couch. I told Poncho recently that I'm only interested in going to Raw if I can sit with at least one of you guys. Preferably both. Now that I've made that clear, I'll volunteer to be the dude who buys the tickets, if you guys can each give me confirmations that you are going and can reimburse me. Rusty, if your family is coming out again, I don't know if I can buy that many tickets, but if that's the case I would certainly reimburse you if you picked up an extra one for me.
Let's go watch wrestling!
