UnWrest

What's up everyone?  This is a bit of a crazy week as far as wrestling and my own personal life goes. Therefore, I'm going to be calling an audible and making a few changes. First, the weekly version of UnWrest will be preempted this week. HOWEVER, I am going to post a detailed review of the AJ Styles vs. Daniel Bryan match instead. So, it will read something like "UnWrest Special Edition: AJ Styles vs. Daniel Bryan." Secondly, I will be covering 3 different events over the next few days. 1) By Friday evening, I will have a review up for Crown Jewel. 2) Saturday Night, I will be posting a review of Streaming for Vengeance, the Chris Jericho Cruise event with Alpha Club vs. Bullet Club and the ROH Tournament. 3) By Saturday or Sunday, I will have the NJPW Power Struggle event covered on the website. Lastly, I will be posting more REWIND matches. Anyone with any suggestions, please send them on Twitter @cdub1898. On a side note, in the next few days, the

This is it: The first ever All-Women's WWE PPV. And it's a major accomplishment that the show is happening 3 years into the rebooted effort on the main roster to feature the great women wrestlers of today. However, let's not pretend this show doesn't have a bit of a cloud over it. Ticket sales were slow initially. WWE is promoting a sell-out, but we'll see. The card hasn't been the most inspired in the entire world, and some unfortunate injuries on the women's roster has had its effect on the show quality in general. In addition, so many other events have been promoted in concurrence and addition to Evolution that this hasn't received a proper amount of attention given its historic nature. Then, there's the biggest cloud of all over this: that this show is just a consolation prize and a media wall against the fact that WWE is doing an event in 5 days in Saudi Arabia. Crown Jewel will feature no women due to its strict rules and will take place in a

What happens when you take one of the greatest wrestlers of all time and you pit him against arguably the greatest big man in wrestling history? Well, that's the situation WCW backed themselves into in late 1993. The original plan was for Sid to be the one who challenged Vader for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship at Starrcade 1993. But after the famed scissors incident with Arn Anderson that resulted in Sid's firing, Ric Flair assumed the position as the new #1 Contender to Vader's championship at Starrcade 1993. This would take place in front of Flair's hometown crowd of Charlotte, NC. Also, Flair would proclaim that he would walk away from wrestling if he would lose. Keep in mind that Flair is wrestling against Vader, a man managed by the guy who Flair defeated at the first Starrcade 10 years prior: Harley Race. And Vader is the unstoppable monster of WCW, having decimated many other great wrestlers like Sting, Ricky Steamboat, Cactus Jack, and "British Bu

"You want a war? You're gonna get one."- Scott Hall, WCW Monday Nitro (May 27, 1996) This one statement started the NWO storyline that revolutionized the wrestling world. But what led to it is what is almost just as intriguing. Scott Hall and Kevin Nash both were nearing the end of their WWF contracts. Hall and Nash both saw that they could make good money working less dates for WCW. When Vince refused to try to match WCW's contracts, Nash and Hall both decided to head to WCW. But before they could do that, they still needed to fulfill their WWF contracts. As such, Kevin Nash (Diesel) spent a few months in a program with The Undertaker culminating in a WrestleMania match. After putting Undertaker over, the end was near and clear for Diesel: a confrontation with newly crowned WWF Champion Shawn Michaels. So, on the first In Your House following WrestleMania XII, the match was set up to help give Shawn Michaels his first big challenge to overcome. With the end not rea

The G1 Climax separates New Japan from the rest of its competition. 1 month full of wrestling action that culminates in one man emerging as the #1 Contender for the IWGP Heavyweight Championship. The tournament has a lot of ups and downs throughout, and it leads to a chaotic final 3 night span of the tournament for the block finals and for the tournament final itself. 2016 was itself a chaotic year for New Japan. Having lost four of its biggest stars including AJ Styles and Shinsuke Nakamura, New Japan was looking more to wrestlers such as Tetsuya Naito and Kenny Omega to emerge as main-event level acts for the company to build around. Naito had captured the IWGP Heavyweight Championship for a short run earlier in the year, while Omega was building himself as the leader of the Bullet Club and having just completed a run as IWGP Intercontinental Champion. So, as destiny and Gedo's booking would have it, Omega and Naito would meet in the finals of their block to determine who w

Emotion. Emotion is, by its very definition, an investment on the part of the person feeling it towards something. It's a reaction to external stimuli that causes someone to feel something in a certain way. One of the greatest wrestlers to ever be able to pull that out of an audience was "The American Dream" Dusty Rhodes. 2013 was a year in which a whole new generation got to feel the power of Big Dust in a big angle one more time. Background Cody Rhodes had lost a match to Randy Orton. The recently-turned-heel Triple H informed Cody that he was fired for losing the match. Weeks later, Goldust reappeared to try to avenge his brother and win back his career. Unfortunately, Goldust failed. Week upon week of humiliation followed in which even Dusty Rhodes would suffer a knockout punch from a reluctant Big Show (who would have been fired for not hitting Dusty). The result of all this was Dusty putting his own career and job with WWE on the line for one last chance for h

Well, this is a little bit of life imitating art, or is it art imitating life? In any case, thanks to the great podcast this week on Something to Wrestle which focused on the drama that resulted in Stephanie first marrying Triple H on TV and then dating and marrying him in real life, I thought I'd go back down memory lane 19 years to see a historic moment in their on-screen/off-screen relationship: WWF Armageddon 1999. Credit: WWE Network; WWF Armageddon 1999 Background The storyline is basically this: Vince McMahon and Triple H are now blood enemies. Vince has tried to put the screws to Triple H several times, including outright screwing him out of the WWF Championship at Survivor Series 1999. Triple H, for his part, had spent months berating Vince and making leud remarks and threats towards Stephanie herself at points in the feud. Both sides attacked the other, and Triple H actually had a TRO (Temporary Restraining Order) on Vince. Stephanie was engaged to another

Credit: WWE WWE Evolution Promotional Poster This should feel like a bigger deal. After all, this is the first time ever that an All-Women PPV is taking place under the WWE corporate umbrella. But WWE has done a great job of completely killing the show with an uninspired card, lack of promotion, lack of interest overall, and finding a million different other things to promote to undermine the event. Still, some fans (like myself) want to give the women their due and hope to enjoy this show. Here's a rundown of the card and my predictions for each match: 1) Raw Women's Championship: Ronda Rousey (c) vs. Nikki Bella If this goes longer than 5 minutes, it's definitely too long. As good as Nikki can be in the ring (at times), Rousey should just absolutely massacre her. The only ways to prolong this match in a realistic way would be 1) an injury angle or 2) Twin Magic with Brie interfering. Otherwise, this should be short and awesome. Prediction: Ronda Retains 2)

This was a very hard week for wrestling fans. On one hand, we saw a real life horrible situation unfold in front of our very eyes where one of the big stars in the industry is fighting a real life battle. We also had WWE stick to its Crown Jewel location while cutting promotion for their All-Women event Evolution. And Impact Wrestling continued its downward trend towards assured destruction in 2019. But there were some bright spots this week in WWE and around the world of wrestling. So, here's a review of Raw, SmackDown, NXT, NXT UK, MLW, and ROH along with the usual Podcast Recommendation of the Week. Let's Do This! UnWrest: The Unstoppable Force Meeting The Immoveable Object...  Raw Thoughts - There's only so much I can do for this particular show. My mind was preoccupied for most of the evening, as I imagine most of your minds were, when Roman/Joe told the world about his real-life leukemia diagnosis. This just bothered me for most of the rest of the show, and