ROH Death Before Dishonor

Overall rating: ★★★●★☆☆

A couple of pretty good matches and nothing that wasn't worth watching if you have the time - except maybe the Pure Championship, but that one might be worth watching just for how unusual it was. But nothing that I'd say to go out of your way for either.

AEW All Out

Overall rating: ★★★●☆☆☆

Obviously the big news from this show were the three additions to the cast (remember when they said there were maybe ten people at most at WWE they'd want to hire if they became available? How many are we up to now?) but I find them rather a mixed bag. I like all three, but... one's a woman so there's not much chance she'll get a better shot here than she got at WWE; one's someone that I know a lot of people love but I guess I got back into wrestling a little bit late to really get on board when that hype train left the station; and one's absolutely fantastic, but I'm a little concerned about the way he'll be used and whether he'll really get the opportunity to shine that he had before. So I'm cautious at this stage. I'd like them to do well, but I often find myself wishing that AEW was better than it is.

NWA 73

Overall rating: ★★★○☆☆☆

They promoted this on iMPACT! so this was their opportunity to bring in new viewers, right? They convinced us to watch this show (along with EmPowerrr) so it should have been designed as a good introduction. But it wasn't. They (mostly) didn't bother explaining who anyone was or what was going on in the story, so it was basically just a bunch of generic matches between people I've never heard of for reasons I wasn't aware of. The crowd really seemed to enjoy hearing Ric Flair mumble-shout about his career, but I could have done without it. They really, really wanted me to care about shit that happened decades ago and I just don't. They set some stuff up for later shows that I won't watch. If this was their best attempt to draw me in, they failed.

NWA EmPowerrr

Overall Rating: ★★★★★☆☆

It was weird how many AEW wrestlers were on this show, given that there wasn't even any cross-promotion involved. It made NWA look like they couldn't put on a show of their own. They did do some cross-promotion with iMPACT!, but the iMPACT! wrestlers were mostly just in the Invitational Cup, so that makes all the AEW wrestlers in regular matches seem even weirder. The commentary wasn't great, but it wasn't as bad as Pat McAfee. Over all, it was mostly fine, if a little slow, with some high points.

NXT TakeOver 36

 Overall rating: ★★★★★★☆

The million dollar championship was all right as a warmup, and there were a couple of all-time great matches, but unfortunately the main event was a bit of a letdown. If it had ended with the women's championship instead of the men's (or the UK men's championship - although that would be a weird choice since it's another show's belt), it would have left a much better impression. Still absolutely worth watching, just temper your expectations for Kross vs. Joe.

ROH Glory by Honor Night 2

Overall rating: ★★★★★☆☆

This was better than night one, but still a lot of filler. And the main event cage match was just a bit too much, and a bit confusing at times with all the people who ran in to interfere. I feel like I've seen way too many people, recently, do the thing where they get some supposedly sharp implement and very deliberately cut their opponent's forehead and it always looks real weird and unnatural. Stop doing that.

WWE SummerSlam

Overall rating: ★★☆☆☆☆☆

Some terrible writing, boring matches, and bad results. Nothing worth seeing on the entire show. A dismal failure.

iMPACT! Emergence

• Singles (Matt Cardona vs. Rohit Raju): 4/7. You know what? I don't think I care about Matt Cardona. I don't know why I'm supposed to like him or what his deal is. He had that sort of half-arsed feud with Brian Myers that dragged on and fizzled out, and now he's got Chelsea Green with him, but I don't what that does for either of them, story-wise.
• Intergender Tag (Tasha Steelz, Savannah Evans, Fallah Bahh & No Way vs. Decay): 5/7. I don't like 4-on-4 matches and I don't like ad-hoc tag teams, but I do like Decay a lot, and there were some cool moments.
• Singles (Steve Maclin vs. Petey Williams): 4/7. I don't know who either of these guys are. They're vaguely familiar, but that's it.
• Singles (Taylor Wilde vs. Madison Raine): 5/7. Tenille Dashwood and Kaleb with a K are always good entertainment and their new alliance with Raine is going well.
• #1 Contender Four-Way (Moose vs. Ace Austin vs. Sami Callihan vs. Chris Sabin): 6/7. Moose and Austin are always entertaining.
• X-Division Championship (Jake Something vs. Josh Alexander): 6/7. Two big beefy boys hurling themselves and each other about the room. Nice. I've been wondering though: what is the "X division"?
• Intergender Tag (Deonna Purrazzo & Matthew Rehwoldt vs. Trey Miguel & Melina): 6/7. Purrazzo and Rehwoldt are very good and they work very well as a tag team.
• Men's Tag Championship (Good Brothers vs. Violent By Design vs. Rich Swann & Willie Mack): 2/7. I don't like tag team triple threats. I don't like Rich Swann. I don't like Rhyno as a heel, and I don't like VBD as a faction; they just come across as all talk, even when they're winning. I'm sick of the Good Brothers and the current direction of the entire Elite faction.
• World Championship (Brian Myers vs. Christian Cage): 4/7. I Find Brian Myers confusing. I can't tell if he's supposed to be (annoyingly) as good as he thinks he is, or if he's supposed to be a delusional narcissist. I feel like he's stuck somewhere in between.

Overall rating: 5/7. There were definitely some good matches and moments, but also some stuff that I didn't care for or could have skipped. And unfortunately, the last two matches (which ideally you'd like to be the best part of the show) were some I'd have been just as happy not to see. Especially that tag championship. I almost did skip that one. But I am very glad to see Matthew Rehwoldt doing well. I always liked him in WWE.

ROH Glory by Honor Night 1

• Singles (Silas Young vs. Rey Horus): 4/7. I don't understand the point of having these regular, one-on-one, no special rules matches for no stakes on big shows like this. Just do it on the weekly TV show.
• Six-Man Mayhem (Demonic Flamita vs. Eli Isom vs. Dak Draper vs. PJ Black vs. Mike Bennett vs. Danhausen): 4/7. I really wish they'd explained the rules of this match because I didn't know what was going on. Two people are legal at a time, but there's no teams and no tags, you can just come in any time there aren't two competitors in the ring, and whoever gets in first becomes legal. That much I figured out fairly quickly, but I didn't know if it was first-fall or elimination. And that's pretty important to establishing stakes. As it went on I figured out it was first-fall, but why not just say that at the start? This is not a common match type. Anyway, the rules are weird and I don't think this match type works well at all. But Dalton Castle was very good on commentary, and Danhausen is very fun.
• Tag Team (The Allüre vs. Vita Vonstarr & Max the Impaler): 4/7. Max the Impaler is very cool but this was just another regular match for no stakes.
• Singles (Brian Johnson vs. EC3): 4/7. If they didn't have enough interesting matches for a two-night event, maybe they should have just done one night.
• Singles (Bateman vs. Mark Briscoe): 4/7. This was supposed to be a tag team match, which would have been a little more interesting since the Briscoes are a good team, but Jay Briscoe got covid so it was another disappointing match. Actually, I'm pretty frequently disappointed by Bateman; I keep waiting for him to be as cool as he looks like he should be and he's just not.
• Pure Championship (Rhett Titus vs. Jonathan Gresham): 5/7. Finally something interesting. These two are both members of The Foundation, so that automatically changes the dynamic, and Pure Rules is a neat twist on a standard match. Not as cool as Heritage Rules from NXT UK, but still neat. And the championship on the line, so there are actual stakes! Still, not a particularly great match.
• 8-Person Tag (VLNCE UNLTD vs. La Faccion Ingobernable): 4/7. A lot of faffing about and time-wasting at the start of this one, and too many people in the match. Even the commentators seemed genuinely confused about what was happening at times.
• World Championship (Flip Gordon vs. Bandido): 5/7. I expected this to be a lot faster and more spectacular, tbh. It was ok, but not really main-event worthy, you know?

Overall rating: 4/7. An extremely long and unremarkable show. Nothing terrible, but nothing great either. And there's still another night to go.

iMPACT! Homecoming

• Homecoming Tournament Round 1 (Hernandez & Alisha vs. Deonna Purrazzo & Matthew Rehwoldt): 5/7. Nice to see Rehwoldt (formerly Aiden English) again, and the match was decent. Seemed like they were probably holding back though, because they still have to wrestle again later.
• Homecoming Tournament Round 1 (Thicc Mama Pump & Little Petey Pump vs. Matt Cardona & Chelsea Green): 6/7. I got a laugh out of Jordynne and Petey's Scott Steiner gimmick, and the bit when they had to help each other to lift Cardona was good too. Plenty of really good, fun tag teaming throughout.
• Homecoming Tournament Round 1 (Tommy Dreamer & Rachael Ellering vs. Brian Myers & Missy Hyatt): 4/7. The joke was ok, but it dragged on a bit.
• Homecoming Tournament Round 1 (Decay vs. Fallah N Flava): 4/7. Why would Fallah agree to be in an intergender match if he's not willing to fight a woman? That's just dumb.
• Singles (Willie Mack vs. Deaner): 4/7. To be honest, I wasn't really paying attention to this one. I don't care about these guys and I was just waiting for the next round of the Homecoming Tournament.
• Homecoming Tournament Round 2 (Deonna Purrazzo & Matthew Rehwoldt vs. Matt Cardona & Chelsea Green): 5/7. Felt like a bit of forced gender segregation in this one, but it was quite good regardless.
• Homecoming Tournament Round 2 (Decay vs. Tommy Dreamer & Rachael Ellering): 5/7. The bit where they were all biting each other was hilarious. Otherwise it mostly felt like filler.
• X Division Championship (Josh Alexander vs. Black Taurus): 5/7. This probably deserved a higher rating but I just wasn't really here for it. I just want more Homecoming matches.
• Homecoming Tournament Final (Deonna Purrazzo & Matthew Rehwoldt vs. Decay): 5/7. The best part of this tournament was the comedy bits and this match was a little lacking in those. It was a decent match though.
• Hardcore (W Morrissey vs. Eddie Edwards): 2/7. Didn't really pay any attention to this one but I left it on in case anything cool happened. It didn't.

Overall Rating: 5/7. I've got to compare Homecoming to WWE's Mixed Match Challenge and it comes up short. Of course, MMC was a whole series and not just a single event, so there was more time to establish the teams and do more with it, but even as far as the matches went I feel like this was something of a missed opportunity. There were definitely some fun bits and some good wrestling, but it could have been much better than it was.