NXT TakeOver: Stand & Deliver

 Night One

• Pete Dunn vs. Kushida: 4/7. It was an ok match, but there was nothing particular about it to grab my attention.
• #1 Contender Gauntlet Eliminator Match (Leon Ruff vs. Isaiah Scott vs. Bronson Reed vs. Cameron Grimes vs. Dexter Lumis vs LA Knight): 5/7. Took a bit to get going, but once it did it was pretty good.
• NXT UK Men's Championship (Walter vs. Tommaso Ciampa): 5/7. It seemed unlikely that Ciampa would move to NXT UK, or that the UK championship would move to NXT.
• NXT Men's Tag Team Championship Triple Threat (MSK vs. Grizzled Young Veterans vs. Legado del Fantasma): 5/7. All three teams were legal at the same time! They got rid of the stupid rule where you have to be tagged in by your opponent!
• NXT Women's Championship (Shirai Io vs. Raquel Gonzales): 5/7. Shirai jumped off a giant skull. She wasn't inside a garbage bin though.

Night One Rating: 5/7. It was all good, but nothing really stood out.

Night Two

• Cruiserweight Championship Unification (Santos Escobar vs. Jordan Devlin): 2/7. Jordan Devlin.
• NXT Women's Tag Team Championship (Shotzi Blackheart and Ember Moon vs. The Way): 5/7. I really like all of these wrestlers, but the match itself was a bit hard to care about because I didn't think there was any chance of Shotzi and Ember losing the titles so soon.
• North American Championship (Bronson Reed vs. Johnny Gargano): 6/7. I would have preferred a different outcome.
• NXT Men's Championship (Finn Bálor vs. Karrion Kross): 5/7. I want to like Karrion Kross, but I don't feel like his heart's really in his gimmick. Scarlett is obviously 100% into it, but I'm not so sure about him.
• Unsanctioned Match (Adam Cole vs. Kyle O'Reilly): 4/7. If it's unsanctioned, why is it happening in the CWC, in front of the NXT audience, broadcast on the WWE Network? If it's not a sanctioned wrestling match, why should it end with a pin? Why is advertised as part of the show? Nothing about this concept makes sense! Also, all the stuff with the chain was very dumb.

Night Two Rating: 4/7. Less consistent than the first night, with some higher highs and lower lows.

---

Overall Rating: 5/7. I don't think there was anything in this show that I'd actually been looking forward to, and nothing that really surprised me either. For a two-night, Wrestlemania-week event, I expected more.

Ring of Honor 19th Anniversary Show

• Television Championship (Tracy Williams vs. Kenny King): 2/7. I think the lack of a crowd really hurt this one. It's just hard to really get into a match when there's no crowd response. I dunno, maybe I'd have enjoyed it more later in the show, but maybe not.
• Flip Gordon vs. Mark Briscoe: 2/7. I barely paid attention to this one, to be honest.
• Dalton Castle vs. Josh Woods: 2/7. At this point I was starting to think I was just wasting my time watching this show.
• Grudge Match (Jay Briscoe vs. EC3): 3/7. I'm not sure what the actual grudge behind this was, and I don't know what EC3 actually wanted, but he did keep yelling about honour a lot. I do like EC3, but yeah, just not sure what was going on here.
• Triple Threat (Flamita vs. Bandido vs. Rey Horus): 6/7. This was incredible. The lack of an audience hurt it a bit, but it was still super cool. Three luchadores just doing non-stop luchadore stuff. I'd watch this all day.
• Unsanctioned Match (Matt Taven vs. Vincent): 2/7. I've got to give them credit for not having an "unsanctioned" match on the premises or during the actual show. Makes much more sense this way - even if showing the video still kind of makes it seems like they actually did sanction it... But the match was dumb. Listen, AEW tried having some guys fight each other in an empty building for no clear reason and it was dumb. This was a different building, and there was a better excuse for the ring being there, but it was still dumb.
• Pure Championship (Dak Draper vs. Jonathan Gresham): 5/7. Pure Rules is a neat twist on an otherwise standard match, and this match was fantastic. Again, the lack of an audience brought it down a little, and I felt like the end dragged on a bit, but still a very good match.
• ROH Tag Team Championship (The Foundation vs. La Faccion Ingobernable): 4/7. Just an OK match, but made slightly more interesting by the ongoing drama between LFI and their manager.
• ROH Championship (Jay Lethal vs. Rush): 5/7. Rush is very entertaining, but this match too would have greatly benefited from a live audience, and went on a little long.

Overall Rating: 3/7. This show could have got a decent overall score, I think, if it had an audience. Put other wrestlers around the ring like AEW, do masks and social distancing like NJPW, or do some kind of remote/fake audience like WWE, but do something. The empty, silent room just doesn't work for wrestling.

iMPACT! Sacrifice 2021

• Tag Match (Decay vs. Reno Scum): 6/7. Decay are really growing on me. I don't know what this match was about or why it was happening, but it was cool.
• Intergender Tag Match (Tenille Dashwood & Kaleb with a K vs. Havok & Nevaeh): 4/7. Tenille and Kaleb are the kind of bad guys who get beaten up a lot and win by sneaky cheating. And that's fine. But this didn't feel like a PPV match. I'd probably have rated it higher if it was on a regular episode.
• Tag Match (Violent by Design vs. James Storm & Chris Sabin): 4/7. I guess Rhino is joining VBD? Okay. I feel like this storyline is going nowhere though.
• Hold Harmless Match (Eddie Edwards vs. Brian Myers): 3/7. I liked how Matt Cardona interfered to keep it fair after Hernandez interfered first, but otherwise I didn't really care about this one. Are they building up to a Myers vs. Cardona match? Why? Just do it.
• Knockouts Tag Team Championship (Fire 'N Flava vs. Jordynne Grace & Jazz): 4/7. I didn't think Jordynne and Jazz would win and they didn't.
• X Division Championship (TJP vs. Ace Austin): 5/7. I like both of these guys but I just wasn't feeling it.
• Knockouts Championship (Deonna Purrazzo vs. ODB): 4/7. What was the point of Deonna's friends being banished? It didn't seem like it made any difference.
• Men's Tag Team Championship (The Good Brothers vs. FinJuice): 3/7. I didn't think FinJuice could possibly win this, so I wasn't really paying attention. And then they did and I was like "Wait, what? Wish I'd actually watched this now." I blame the writing for not convincing me that it was a possibility.
• World Title Unification (Rich Swann vs. Moose): 1/7. Don't care; didn't watch it.

Overall rating: 4/7. I'm kind of tired today so that might have diminished my enthusiasm, but this basically felt like a really long episode rather than a PPV.

AEW Revolution 2021

• Tag Team Championship (The Young Bucks vs. the Inner Circle): 5/7. Jericho and MJF aren't particularly great as a tag team, but they're not bad. I didn't think they had any chance of winning though, so it didn't feel like the stakes were really there.
• Casino Tag Team Royale: 7/7. I always love a battle royale.
• Women's Championship (Shida Hikaru vs. Ryo Mizunami): 5/7. I felt like this was a bit of a letdown after some of the tournament matches that led up to it.
• Miro and Kip Sabian vs. Best Friends: 4/7. Miro has been pretty funny in this storyline but none of the others have really sold me on it and I just don't care about seeing them actually fight.
• Big Money Match (Adam Page vs. Matt Hardy): 6/7. I love the Dark Order coming out to support Adam Page and I hope they stay friends forever.
• Face of the Revolution Ladder Match (Cody Rhodes vs. Penta El Zero Miedo vs. Lance Archer vs. Scorpio Sky vs. Max Caster vs. Ethan Page): 3/7. Ladder matches are just not good. Everyone's climbed a ladder before; we know it's not that difficult.
• Street Fight (Sting and Darby Allin vs. Team Taz): 1/7. I don't need to see a 62-year-old man wrestling, or Darby Allin doing anything, and if you're going to do a pre-taped match then there'd better be some impossible stunts, magic, or at least a ridiculous arena to fight in. A wrestling ring set up in an empty warehouse just isn't it.
• Men's Championship Exploding Barbed Wire Deathmatch (Kenny Omega vs. Jon Moxley): 1/7. This was a dumb premise to begin with, and it was always going to be bad, but the "explosion" at the end was just the most pathetic thing ever.

Overall rating: 4/7. Exploding Barbed Wire Deathmatch. Who thought that was a good idea?

Simple trick for getting a free house

All you have to do is take out a home loan and buy a house then, instead of living in the house, you get someone else to live there and pay off the loan for you. When they're done paying, you somehow still get to keep the house even though they paid for it and they get nothing.

Weirdly, this is practically impossible to do if you don't already own a house, and just gets easier the more houses you already have.

And even though you obviously just stole a house, you don't have to go to prison. No one will even suggest it. Everyone will just act like that's a completely normal thing to do.

WWE Elimination Chamber 2021

• SmackDown Elimination Chamber (Cesaro vs. Daniel Bryan vs. Jey Uso vs. Kevin Owens vs. King Corbin vs. Sami Zayn): 6/7. Started a bit slow but picked up once everyone was in the ring.
• Universal Championship (Roman Reigns vs. Daniel Bryan): 5/7. Surprisingly entertaining for what was such a brief match and such a foregone conclusion.
• United States Championship (Bobby Lashley vs. Riddle vs. John Morrison): 2/7 I'd rather Matt Riddle was not on this show; I don't care about Bobby Lashley; and I knew John Morrison wasn't going to win. So I didn't care about this match.
• Women's Tag Team Championship (Nia Jax and Shayna Baszler vs. Bianca Belair and Sasha Banks): 4/7. Bianca and Sasha don't have any reason to be a team (and nor do Shayna and Nia, really), and the stuff with Reginald seems weirdly pointless.
• WWE Championship Elimination Chamber (Drew McIntyre vs. Jeff Hardy vs. Kofi Kingston vs. AJ Styles vs. Randy Orton vs. Sheamus): 5/7. Why did AJ Styles cheat to give himself a disadvantage? In this type of match you want to enter as late as possible, so breaking out of your pod to get into the ring early is counter-productive. Also, disappointed that his pod didn't then get selected to open (to mark his official entrance into the match). I don't think they really thought this through. Also, like the other Elimination Chamber match, it didn't really get good until everyone was in anyway.
• WWE Championship Money in the Bank Cash-in (Drew McIntyre vs. the Miz): 4/7. I'm just glad the 2020 MitB story is finally over. Everything from the nonsensical race up the building, to Miz suing Otis, to Miz cashing it in but then getting it back, has been garbage.

Overall rating: 4/7. Having two men's elimination chamber matches instead of one men's and one women's was a weird choice. And cancelling the Raw Championship match instead of replacing Lacey Evans was another weird choice. The show had its moments, but a lot of it felt haphazard or less than it should have been.

The Watch

I originally wrote a review of each week's episode as they came out and posted them on my Facebook. If you already read them there, there'll be nothing new here. I have very slightly rewritten them to reformat them into a single review of the entire series, but have made no significant changes.

NXT TakeOver Vengeance Day

• Women's Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic Final (Ember Moon and Shotzi Blackheart vs. Dakota Kai and Raquel González): 7/7. It took me a little bit to get into it because I wasn't expecting the show to start in top gear, but it did and it was great.
• North American Championship (Johnny Gargano vs. Kushida): 7/7. Johnny Wrestling on top form.
• Men's Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic Final (MSK vs. the Grizzled Young Veterans): 7/7. Perfect tag team wrestling from both teams.
• NXT Women's Championship Triple Threat (Io Shirai vs. Mercedes Martinez vs. Toni Storm): 6/7. On almost any other show this would have been a highlight, but on this show it just wasn't quite as intense and focused as the other matches.
• NXT Men's Championship (Finn Bálor vs. Pete Dunne): 7/7. Almost painfully good.

Overall rating: 7/7. Aside from the extremely weird and lame Josiah Williams song at the start and the one Cameron Grimes promo in the middle, this was almost perfect from start to finish.

iMPACT! No Surrender 2021

• Six-Person Intergender Tag (Tenille Dashwood and XXXL vs. Decay): 4/7. Either do proper intergender matches, or do mixed tag matches. This weird hybrid where you pretend it's intergender but it's actually not is bad and dumb.
• Brian Myers and Hernandez vs. Eddie Edwards and Matt Cardona: 3/7. I would have preferred to see Myers vs. Cardona one-on-one, so the other two dudes were just an unwelcome distraction.
• Deaner vs. Jake Something: 3/7. The result was obvious, but hopefully it'll lead to something more interesting.
• Triple Threat Revolver (Daivari vs. Suicide vs. Willie Mack vs. Ace Austin vs. Trey Miguel vs. Chris Bey vs. Josh Alexander vs. Blake Christian): 7/7. This is a neat concept for a match. Basically a gauntlet match, but it kind of fixes the problem with regular gauntlet matches by putting an extra person in there so that it's not such an uphill climb for one of the first in to make it all the way to the end. And then it finishes with that sudden-death feeling of a triple threat. Plus, there was some really good wrestling in this one.
• No Disqualification Tornado Knockouts Tag Team Championship (Fire n Flava vs. Havok and Nevaeh): 4/7. They seemed weirdly reluctant to use weapons, but also obliged to? I feel like, if you're going to bring weapons into a match, you've got to commit to them. Don't just put the kendo stick down; use it till it breaks.
• X Division Championship (TJP vs. Rohit Raju): 5/7. Started off really strong but slowed up a bit as it went on.
• Six-Person Tag (Deonna Purrazzo, Kimber Lee, and Susan vs. Jordynne Grace, Jazz, and ODB): 4/7. So, Susan is some kind of alter-ego or suppressed personality or something, right? I feel like we're just waiting for the other version of her to reappear and that's when it's going to get good?
• Triple Threat Tag Team Championship (Chris Sabin and James Storm vs. the Good Brothers vs. Private Party): 4/7. I don't like tag team triple threats. Why are there only two people in the ring at a time? That whole thing where the third team is just sitting on the sidelines until one of their opponents tags them in is weird and doesn't really make sense. I get that it creates a different dynamic to a regular triple threat, but is it better? I don't think so.
• World Championship (Rich Swann vs. Tommy Dreamer): 1/7. Very slow and boring and I don't want to watch Rich Swann.

Overall Rating: 4/7. Some of it was very good, some of it was very bad. Some of it was setting up things that may be very good later.

WWE Royal Rumble 2021

• WWE Championship (Drew McIntyre vs. Goldberg): 1/7. I barely even watched this one because who cares.
• Smackdown Championship (Sasha Banks vs. Carmella): 4/7. It was just a match.
• Women's Royal Rumble: 6/7. This is where the show should have started. If Rhea Ripley or Alexa Bliss had won it would have been 7/7.
• Universal Championship Last Man Standing (Roman Reigns vs. Kevin Owens): 5/7. I'm not really into this Roman Reigns storyline but it was a good match.
• Men's Royal Rumble: 5/7. Rating it lower than the women's just because there was no one I particularly wanted to see win it. Throw Adam Cole, Johnny Gargano, and Walter in there and suddenly I'm way more invested. Add Tyler Breeze and Drake Maverick for a bit of fun and you've got a 7/7 match.

Overall Rating: 5/7. Cut the first two matches and you've got a really good show. Part of my lack of enthusiasm for the men's rumble was probably down to how long the show was.