Tags
Adam Cole, AEW, AEW Dynamite, AEW Heavyweight Championship, AEW Tag Team Championships, AEW Women's Championship, AJ Styles, Akira Tozawa, Aleister Black, Andrade "Cien" Almas, Angelina Love, Aron Stevens, Auska, Buddy Murphy, Bully Ray, Cameron Grimes, Chris Jericho, Cody Rhodes, Colt Cabana, CW Anderson, Damian Priest, Darby Allin, Deonna Purrazzo, Dr. Britt Baker DDS, Dragon Lee, Eddie Valiant's Hot Take, Finn Bálor, Frankie Kazarian, Hangman Page, Humberto Carrillo, Jay Lethal, Johnny Gargano, Jonathan Gresham, Jungle Boy, Kenny Omega, Killian Dane, Kris Statlander, Kushida, Mandy Leon, Maria Manic, Mark Haskins, Matt Hardy, Matt Taven, NWA, NWA Into The Fire, NWA Powerrr, NXT, NXT Championship, NXT Women's Championship, PCO, Pete Dunne, Podcast, R Truth, Randy Orton, Raw, Rey Mysterio, Rhea Ripley, Ricky Starks, Ricochet, Riho, Ring Of Honor, Ring Of Honor Final Battle 2019, Ring Of Honor TV Championship, Ring Of Honor World Championship, ROH, Rush, Sal Rinauro, Scorpio Sky, SCU, Shane Taylor, Shayna Baszler, Smackdown Live, Tasha Steelz, The Briscoes, The Butcher And The Blade, The Dawsons, The Lucha Bros, The New Day, The Revival, The Wildcards, The Young Bucks, Thunder Rosa, TLC, Top Matches Of The Week, Travis Banks, Vincent, Vinny Marseglia, WWE, WWE Raw, WWE TLC, WWE TLC 2019, Zicky Dice
We are back again with another edition of The Top Matches of the week and this was an amazing week of wrestling especially in the WWE. There is so much wrestling at our fingertips that it’s absolutely mind blowing. There is Smackdown On Fox on Friday night, MLW Fusion every Saturday night, Raw on Mondays, Impact on Tuesdays, NXT on USA Network and AEW Dynamite on TNT on Wednesday nights, and Beyond Wrestling Uncharted Territory on Thursday nights. As you can see, you can occupy your week well if you try to watch all the wrestling promotions in the world right now, but my job is to give you what I thought was the best of every show that I watched during the week. So, get some refreshments, take a seat, and let me be your guide to the wonderful world of professional wrestling. Now the style is going to be a little different in the way that if there is more than one great match then they’ll just be short descriptions, but if not then we’ll go over the match. I also want to remind all of you that can catch my Top 5 of the week on the podcast Eddie Valiant’s Hot Take here. That is where I look at all the matches I have listed here and I pick the five best of all of them.
Ring Of Honor Final Battle 2019 (12/13/2019)
It’s no secret that Ring Of Honor has been struggling since most of all their talent has been poached by the WWE or left to start AEW. Bully Ray took on Mark Haskins in what was a brutal battle as well as Bully Ray being the best heel in the world of wrestling. Unfortunately for him, he took a cheese grader to the nether regions courtesy of Mrs. Haskins and Mark took advantage to get the win. Dragon Lee went to battle with ROH TV Champ Shane Taylor. Taylor dominated most of the match, but those vicious knees from Lee was all it took for him to capture the TV Title. The Briscoes and Jay Lethal and Jonathan Gresham went to war at the event, but by hook or by crook, Lethal and Gresham were able to steal the tag team titles. I had to include this match in here because a 51 year old man who was blackballed in the industry had a spectacular 2019 and became the new Ring Of Honor World Champion as PCO did the unthinkable and beat Rush after Rush threw everything at him.
NWA Into The Fire (12/14/2019)
It’s NWA’s return to the PPV world and it had a pretty good card. Colt Cabana defended his NWA National Championship against not only Ricky Starks, but Aron Stevens as well. Stevens was almost a non factor and punching bag for the whole match. Thunder Rosa despite not knowing her opponent Tasha Steelz, she showed her true dominance in the match and hit a double stomp to get the win.
WWE TLC 2019 (12/15/2019)
Humberto Carrillo and Andrade kicked off the action on the pre-show and they tore the house down as they went counter for counter with each others moves and Andrade even saw some blood. Carrillo in the end was as impressive as ever as he hit a poisonrana and followed it up with a moonsault for the win. The New Day defended their tag team titles against The Revival in a ladder match and I would give these guys a week off especially The Revival who saw Wilder take a big ending from Big E off the ladder and then Dawson landed head first into a ladder after Kofi used the hanging titles as a weapon before he grabbed them for the win. Aleister Black and Buddy Murphy went to war and Murphy may have damaged Black’s Jaw with all the superkicks and knees to the face that he took, but it was a surprise Black Mass that put Murphy away.
WWE RAW (12/16/2019)
This was a decent episode, but kind of a let down from the action of the night before. The match that kind of saved the night was the Gauntlet match to determine the number one contender for Rey Mysterio’s United States Championship. The match started with R-Truth and Akira Tozawa, but the real action didn’t really get good until Tozawa took on Ricochet. From that point on, Ricochet stole the show with great matches against Tozawa, Matt Hardy, and Humberto Carrillo (which was the best one). The other match that was really good was the match between AJ Styles and Randy Orton who were finally meeting after weeks of getting in each other’s business. Surprisingly, AJ was in control of most of the match after locking in the calf crusher that took its toll against Randy, but like a Viper he finds a way to way. After faking Randy out the first time, he attempts another Phenomenal forearm, but he gets caught with an RKO and Randy takes the win.
NXT On USA (12/18/2019)
It’s hard to pick just one or two matches from the whole entire show because almost all of the matches were great. The night opened up with the NXT Championship match that saw Adam Cole defend the title against Finn Balor in what was a great match where both men showcased their athleticism. After a distraction from Johnny Gargano, Adam Cole was able to retain the title. Killian Dane and Damian Priest went to war, but unfortunately for Priest he had a constant target in his hurt ribs and Dane took advantage of it. Don’t count him out though because when things looked bleak, Priest pulled off the win after getting his knees up during an attempted Vader Bomb to which he finishes with The Reckoning. Cameron Grimes vs Kushida was an all out battle as well, but a vicious double stomp from Grimes was all it took for him to win. Last week, Travis Banks was successful against Jaxson Ryker, but this week he took on the Bruiserweight Pete Dunne in what was an all out battle. Dunne would get the win after a huge superplex that he was able to hit to which he followed up with a kick and the bitter end to seal the victory. In the final match, Rhea Ripley was willing to put it all on the line as she took on NXT Women’s Champion Shayna Baszler. They threw everything at eahc other throughout the match, but we all know how dangerous Shayna is especially with the Kirifuda Clutch to which she locked in for several minutes. Rhea never gave up as she is able to get out of it. Baszler continues to work on her, but she makes the mistake of allowing the crowd to distract her. She sets Rhea up on the top turnbuckle, but when the crowd chants Rheas name, Baszler gets distracted and Rhea takes advantage by hitting a super riptide from the top which was all she needed to seal the victory and become the new NXT Women’s Champion.
AEW Dynamite (12/18/2019)
Not the best episode they have put out all year, but a decent show. The night opened with The Lucha Brothers taking on Kenny Omega and Hangman Page, but this week they continued to struggle after Hangman makes the mistake of hitting his own partner which allowed Pentagon Jr. to hit the double stomp for the win. Kris Statlander was fantastic once again on AEW Dynamite as she grabbed a huge win over Dr. Britt Baker DDS earning her a shot at the AEW Women’s Champion Riho on New Years Day. Jungle Boy had to prove that he could wrestle and last ten minutes with the AEW Heavyweight Champion Chris Jericho to which he did after spending the last 90 seconds of the ten minutes in the walls of Jericho. The Young Bucks and SCU did battle for the AEW Tag Team Championships, but SCU was just too good tonight after Kazarian was able to pin Matt Jackson after the SCU Later.
Honorable Mention:
While I thought it was a good match up, Matt Taven vs Vincent didn’t quite live up to the hype that I thought it would be. Still both of these men did their best and Taven sold it well at Final Battle. Maria Manic came out, she destroyed Angelina Love and Mandy Leon establishing that she is the dominant female, but Angelina did not get one ounce of offense in the whole match at Final Battle. On NWA Powerrr, Zicky Dice won his qualifying match to compete for the TV Title against CW Anderson and Sal Rinauro. I love the new rule that you have to win a match in 6:05 to be TV Champ. In relatively short fashion, The Wildcards disposed of The Dawsons in a decent tag team match on NWA Powerrr. I am a huge fan of Deonna Purrazzo and was so proud to see her debut against Auska on RAW, but do you really think they’d make Auska look weak? The Butcher and The Blade vs Cody Rhodes & Darby Allin on AEW Dynamite was good, but not enough to earn it’s way to the top matches.
We are back again with another edition of The Top Matches of the week and this was an amazing week of wrestling especially in the WWE. There is so much wrestling at our fingertips that it’s absolutely mind blowing. There is Smackdown On Fox on Friday night, MLW Fusion every Saturday night, Raw on Mondays, Impact on Tuesdays, NXT on USA Network and AEW Dynamite on TNT on Wednesday nights, and Beyond Wrestling Uncharted Territory on Thursday nights. As you can see, you can occupy your week well if you try to watch all the wrestling promotions in the world right now, but my job is to give you what I thought was the best of every show that I watched during the week. So, get some refreshments, take a seat, and let me be your guide to the wonderful world of professional wrestling. Now the style is going to be a little different in the way that if there is more than one great match then they’ll just be short descriptions, but if not then we’ll go over the match.
We are back again with another edition of The Top Matches of the week and this was an amazing week of wrestling especially in the WWE. There is so much wrestling at our fingertips that it’s absolutely mind blowing. There is Smackdown On Fox on Friday night, MLW Fusion every Saturday night, Raw on Mondays, Impact on Tuesdays, NXT on USA Network and AEW Dynamite on TNT on Wednesday nights, and Beyond Wrestling Uncharted Territory on Thursday nights. As you can see, you can occupy your week well if you try to watch all the wrestling promotions in the world right now, but my job is to give you what I thought was the best of every show that I watched during the week. So, get some refreshments, take a seat, and let me be your guide to the wonderful world of professional wrestling. Now the style is going to be a little different in the way that if there is more than one great match then they’ll just be short descriptions, but if not then we’ll go over the match.
This was an amazing night of wrestling and it all kicked off with the first ever Women’s WarGames match. The match featured Shayna Baszler, Bianca Belair, Io Shirai, and Kay Lee Ray took on Rhea Ripley, Candice LaRae, Tegan Nox, and Dakota Kai. Well , it was supposed to be Dakota and Tegan, but Dakota had her heel turn and took Tegan and herself out of the match. She essentially made it a 4 on 2 match and despite the odds, Rhea found a way to win the match pinning Shayna Baszler. The men’s WarGames match was even more exciting as it was the Undisputed Era (Adam Cole, Bobby Fish, Kyle O’Reilly, and Roderick Strong) who took on Tommaso Ciampa, Keith Lee, Dominik Dijakovic, and their mystery fourth member who turned out to be Kevin Owens. The match featured some amazing moments from guys like Lee, but it was that final moment that took your breath away as Ciampa dropped Cole from the top of the cage through a table.
What should have been the second consecutive amazing night for the WWE kind of fell short. None of the traditional 5 on 5 on 5 matches deserve to be up here, but two matches do. The first match saw Adam Cole having to defend his NXT Championship against Pete Dunne who won the opportunity the night before. Despite being battered and bruised up, these two gave everything they had including an incredible Panama Sunrise from Cole to Dunne on the outside apron. The other match that I thought was great was the match that saw NXT North American Champion Roderick Strong take on WWE United States Champion AJ Styles and WWE Intercontinental Champion Shinsuke Nakamura. The match went back and forth and Shinsuke shined in this match despite taking some bumps including a styles clash that saw Roddy come out of nowhere as he proceeded to throw AJ out of the ring and he took the pinfall for the win.
It was a weird night on RAW and the two redeeming matches of the night was the Fatal 4 way to decide the man who would face AJ Styles for the WWE United States Championship as Rey Mysterio, Ricochet, Drew McIntyre, and Randy Orton all did battle. Rey would get the best of Ricochet with a roll up for the win and it was up to him to get the job done against AJ. AJ was punishing Rey through out the match attacking Rey’s knee, but after Rey successfully hit the 619 on AJ, AJ’s momentum carried him into the referee who went down. This allowed Karl Anderson and Luke Gallows to come in and attack him, but thanks to Randy Orton clearing the ring and hitting AJ with an RKO, Rey was able to win the title. The other match of the night that was good was the match between Seth Rollins and Kevin Owens which happened thanks to Owens delivering a stunner to Seth at the beginning of the show. The match did wonders as it helped possible set up a heel turn for Seth with maybe A.O.P. (Authors Of Pain)?
This week’s episode of NXT wasn’t a terrible one, but it had a couple of memorable matches on the card with the first one being a NXT Tag Team Championship match that saw The Undisputed Era’s Kyle O’Reilly and Bobby Fish take on the team of Keith Lee and Dominik Dijakovic, but that would quickly change as Bobby Fish suffered an injury in the beginning moments that then saw Roderick Strong step in to do the match. It was an excellent match that went back and forth, but UE would take advantage of a distraction by Adam Cole to retain the titles. The other great match on the card was between Tommaso Ciampa and Finn Balor and there is no need to tell you how good the match was, but the ending is what is worth watching since Adam Cole once again made an appearance.
There were a lot of great moments in this episode of Dyanmite like the debut of The Butcher and The Blade or the Jerigoat, but there were also a lot of strange finishes to matches as well. Nonetheless, you knew the minute you saw that Kenny Omega had his rematch with PAC that it was going to be an amazing match and it indeed delivered. After escaping each other’s attempts at finishers, Kenny was able to pull off a win against the number one ranked PAC with a second crucifix pin. I had high hopes for Scorpio Sky who I think is a future star, but we also knew that there was no way he was walking away AEW Champion against Chris Jericho. After some amazing back and forth, Jericho was able to get the win with a lion tamer. What was great about this was the fact that Jon Moxley sort of confronted Jericho at the end of the match making us wonder if that match is on the horizon.
Mance Warner and Jimmy Havoc had themselves one hell of a match on MLW Fusion that saw them leave the arena, go to Jimmy’s house and so much more in a falls count anywhere in Orlando match. The triple threat match between Damian Priest, Pete Dunne, and Killian Dane to decide the number one contender for the NXT Championship was great, but not better than the two WarGames matches. The Fiend (Bray Wyatt) vs Daniel Bryan from Survivor Series was a decent match and while I thought WWE RAW Women’s Champion Becky Lynch vs WWE Smackdown Women’s Champion Bayley vs NXT Women’s Champion Shayna Baszler was a little too slow, it was definitely a lot better than most of the matches that night. Dakota Kai taking on Candice LaRae on NXT On USA had potential to be an excellent match, but the rivalry between these two will be far from over. On Thanksgiving, MLW had a special edition that feature Ross Von Erich take on Jacob Fatu for the MLW Heavyweight Championship and it was a really good match until the predictable heel turn of Filthy Tom Lawlor happened.
As I have said many many times and I’ll say it again there is an abundance of wrestling at our disposal that it’s almost a dream come true because I remember being a teenager and wanting more wrestling than just the WWE and WCW because they were only on certain nights of the week. Now, we live in a world where you are getting WWE’s programming (RAW, Smackdown Live, 205 Live, NXT, NXT UK plus PPV’s when applicable), Impact Wrestling (free on Twitch), and so much independent wrestling whether it be Ring Of Honor TV on Fite, or all the various independent promotions that are on Independent Wrestling TV like Beyond Wrestling and ICW New York to name a few. Now, we are in the midst of a revolution in wrestling especially since AEW debuted with Double Or Nothing and with the fact that they have a weekly show coming in September. So with all this wrestling going on, I am once again here to present to you guys what I consider to be the top matches of the week from all the promotions that I have watched. If there is any match I may have missed and you think I should check it out then tweet me 
This was a much anticipated match between the IWGP Intercontinental Champion Kota Ibushi against the man he beat for the title at the G1 Supercard Tetsuya Naito. Tetsuya seemed to dominate the match for the most part while Ibushi was able to get some good shots in, but Naito consistently worked on Ibushi’s neck throughout the match. Then it happened around the 10 minute mark of the match when Naito dumped Ibushi right on his neck on the ring apron and it looked ugly. You were left saying that there was no way that Ibushi was going to get up from that, there was no possible way, but as Red Shoes count got closer to 20, Ibushi somehow willed himself back into the ring. There was no quit in Ibushi who immediately took a reverse huricanarana from the top rope and he still kicked out. Naito had a great game plan as no matter how many times Ibushi countered or kicked out of, he continuously worked on the neck and it eventually paid off when Naito was finally able to hit the destino to take the win and avenge his loss. How Ibushi was able to walk away from this match I will never know, but that landing did look very ugly.
This was a match on the card that I was really looking forward to as per tradition the winner of the Best Of Super Junior Tournament usually challenges the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Champion which was the case as Will Ospreay fresh off his tournament win challenged his longtime friend and champion Dragon Lee. The match was as advertised with so many high flying high risk maneuvers that even air traffic control had a hard time keeping up. The amazing thing about the match is how well these two knew each other so it was hard for one of them to take full advantage. At one point, after failing to hit Dragon Lee with an aerial move, Dragon set him up on top of the barricade then proceeded to enter the ring and launch himself at full speed with a suicide spear that connected landing both men over that security barricade. At times, I couldn’t understand how Will was staying in the match whether it was taking double knees to the chest as he hung up side down against the steal post or having his tiger bomb reversed into an Canadian destroyer which was followed by a knee to the face. Despite all of this, he persevered being able to avoid Lee’s finisher by hitting the hidden blade, following it up with an Os Cutter, and ending it with the stone breaker for the 1-2-3.
There hasn’t been a lot to be excited for when it comes to the product that the WWE has been dishing out for a little while, but this is one match we can all agree on that needed to happen. I honestly do not remember the last time that Zack Ryder and Curt Hawkins had defended the WWE Raw Tag Team Championship titles, but they were on this week’s episode of Raw against The Usos and The Revival in a triple threat match. It was a pretty even match with each team getting a shot in the ring, but the Revival were impressive as they picked and chose their spots and it definitely paid off. Jey Uso was in the ring riding the wave of momentum as he literally superkicked everyone from Zack Ryder to Curt Hawkins, but right as he climbed the top rope to do the signature splash, Dawson tagged Jey and as soon as Jey hit it, Dawson through him out of the ring and he covered Zack Ryder for the 1-2-3. It obviously wasn’t the best match of the week, but hopefully it’s a step in the right direction.
Someone in the WWE must have been listening to the podcast that I am on because we have been saying since episode 1 that the best move for Chad Gable was to be on 205 Live. Last night for the opening match, Jack Gallagher was waiting patiently in the ring to see who his opponent was when the music hit to reveal the former Olympian in what was truly a technical battle between the Olympian Greco-Roma style versus the catch style grappling that Gallagher performs. The match did not disappoint as both men tried to show each other up in a battle of wits. Gallagher would catch a break during the match when he sent Gable against the steel steps giving him an opportunity to take the advantage. At one point, it looked like Gable was going to slap the ankle lock, but Gallagher rolled through and sent him face first into the turnbuckle. He followed it up by throwing Gable into the ropes and follows it up with Lariat, but he couldn’t secure the pinfall. Both men eventually ended up on the outside of the ring where Gable would deliver a overhead German suplex that put Gallagher down. Unfortunately, Gallagher couldn’t make it back into the ring by the referee’s count of 10 making Gable the winner by count out.