Friday, May 31, 2019

An Old Nerd Comes Down Off His AEW High To Predict Takeover 25

Here for all of this.
This is a bit of a weird NXT Takeover for me. In one sense, it’s a return to old-school form, in that it’s not pinned to a Big Four main roster PPV. In other ways, well, I’ve felt disconnected from NXT since Mania. It’s less NXT’s fault and more of the dissatisfaction with the main roster bleeding over to the rest of the product. So I’ve enjoyed matches but haven’t felt connected to the stories. For the most part. Luckily, NXT’s more logical booking helps with the predicting.

Sunday, May 26, 2019

An Old Nerd Grades AEW As A Company After Double Or Nothing

A lot of that isn’t makeup.
Rather thank talk about AEW’s inaugural show, Double or Nothing, on a match by match basis, I want to start by giving them a report card on what they’re saying they’re trying to do. 

An Old Nerd Enjoyed Money In The Bank More Than Expected

OK. Fine.
Money In The Bank wasn’t an awful show. It wasn’t even as awful as I expected it to be. But man, did the ending leave me with a bad taste in my mouth. We couldn’t get a month without Brock Lesnar in the main title picture? Please.

Thursday, May 16, 2019

An Old Nerd Is Going To Watch Money In The Bank, I Guess

I don’t care about much in WWE these days, but I still care about this.
There’s no denying it. Post-Wrestlemania WWE has been an epic flailing shitshow. The Superstar Shakeup, allegedly planned months in advance, was thrown out the window as talent was shifted from one roster to the other and back again over a month, ending in the Wild Card Rule which means anyone can show up anywhere anytime. It’s looking like we’re entering into a Scared Vince / Senile Vince phase, where McMahon overrides everyone at the last minute to give fans what he knows in his hearts they want - chemically burned testicle humor.

It is against this backdrop I make my half-hearted predictions for Money In The Bank.

Tuesday, April 16, 2019

An Old Nerd Encourages You All To Watch The Damn Tick Already

Definitive.
Season 2 of The Tick is quite simply the definitive version of The Tick that we’ve all dreamed of since we first encountered The Tick.

Sunday, April 14, 2019

An Old Nerd Survived 7.5 Hours Of Wrestlemania

Re-valuing the idea of a Wrestlemania Moment
That was a long, long show. Ultimately, WWE knew exactly what they had for the main show of Wrestlemania and built it appropriately. They had three big things, put one at the start, one in the middle, and one at the end, and that way you cared less about the quality of the stuff in the middle, which ranged from awful to fine.

An Old Nerd REally Enjoyed Yet Another Takeover

FWIENDSHIP!
I didn’t expect Takeover: New York to steal the weekend, and it didn’t. But it did surprise me by having every match be better than all but two of the Wrestlemania matches, and most of them better than all but one. 


NXT Tag Team Championship Match: War Raiders (c) vs. Aleister Black and Ricochet: War Raiders keep the belts.

Holy shit. This turned out to be Black and Ricochet’s definitive farewell match in NXT, and everyone involved wrestled like it was. There was incredible action in this match from both teams, and once again I have to admit that while the War Raiders still do nothing for me as characters or champions, as in-ring performers they’re living up to the hype. Black and Ricochet took the pin, of course. (1/1)

North American Championship Match: Velveteen Dream (c) vs. Matt Riddle: Dream will retain and the match will be a hoot.

Dream did retain, as he should. The match was good, but the two of them didn’t click quite the way I thought they would, so the match was solid, but unexceptional. (2/2)

Fatal Four-way for the NXT Women’s Championship: Shayna Baszler (c) vs. Bianca Belair vs. Kairi Sane vs. Io Shirai: I think the last match was setting up a Belair victory.

Nope! Baszler won. I still think they’re planning to move the belt to Belair. There was a hint this week that the Sky Pirates will be  under Paige as manager and coming up to challenge the Iiconics, and that would leave Belair free to finally beat Baszler one on one, say, before Summerslam. Good match, and everyone looked great. (2/3)

United Kingdom Championship Match: Pete Dunne (c) vs. WALTER: as much as I love Pete Dunne, it’s time for him to drop the belt.

And it was. This was a great match - certainly the best I’ve seen out of Walter since his debut. Walter is many impressive things, but there are a couple of things he’s really bad at, like moving at any kind of speed at all, whether running around the ring or kicking out of a pin. Dunne’s not moving on yet, though. He’s insisting on a rematch, which should draw this out for a while. (3/4)

2-out-of-3 Falls Match for the NXT Championship: Johnny Gargano vs. Adam Cole: NXT Champion Johnny Gargano.


I’ll give it to these guys. They knew they were going in under a disadvantage here just because Adam Cole was not Tommasso Ciampa. And they worked their asses off to build tension, build a story, and build the crowd. It was a bit of a dud during the first half of the match where this building was happening, but it just kept getting more exciting, and more tense, and better, and better, until the crowd in the arena and everyone at home was on the edge of their seats, wondering if Gargano was going to win, and if so, how. Great stuff. (4/5)

Sunday, April 7, 2019

An Oldnerd Predicts The Rest-Lemania 35

This is gonna take a while.
I’ve covered three of the matches confirmed for Wrestlemania, That leaves THIRTEEN to go, and probably 14 or maybe 15. John Cena is rumored to have an unannounced match, and Kevin Owens is making a LOT of noise about not being on the card, which means he’s not in the Battle Royal. That’s one or two bonus matches, an Elias performance (that may or may not be involved in one of those) and other shit. 

But let’s get to the rest of the matches and predictions.

Saturday, April 6, 2019

Wrestlemania 35: Slay My Beast, Please

A wish is a dream your heart makes.
The thing about this match is that it’s the same as the Finn Balor match, which was the same as the Daniel Bryan match, which was the same as the Roman Reigns match, the Roman Reigns match, and the Roman Reigns match, even the one Roman Reigns won.

Thursday, April 4, 2019

An Oldnerd Needs To Get These Takeover Predictions In Because It’s On A Friday

Good luck stealing this weekend, NXT.
This is one of those rare occasions where the NXT event is looking to be overshadowed by the WWE event. With the injury in the main event, an underwhelming midcard belt build, and a UK match I don’t have much backstory for, Mania’s definitely going to outshine here. Well, parts of it will.

Wrestlemania 35: Kofimania

Give the people what they want!
If Becky Lynch is the gender-swapped reboot of Daniel Bryan at Wrestlemania 30, Kofi Kingston is the Mirror Universe version.

Wrestlemania 35: The Main Event

And rightfully so.
While I’ll be doing a normal predictions post later in the week for Wrestlemania (and for Takeover New York), there are a few matches on the card that beg for a deeper dive on the storylines that have led up to them, so they’ll get their own posts first. And we’ll start with the biggest, most historic match on the card: Lynch vs. Rousey vs. Charlotte for both women’s championships.

Wednesday, April 3, 2019

An Old Nerd Hopes For An Alternative

16-Bit pixel art? I feel like I’m being marketed to.
Before I get into a long run of pre-Wrestlemania analysis, I need to get this out there.

There’s no getting around it. Pro wrestling is by far the most ethically problematic hobby I have. (A sentence I wrote before the John Oliver bit, by the way.)   Even if you ignore the part where I’m letting people shorten their lives, wreck their bodies, and risk their brains for my entertainment, WWE is an ethical garbage fire.

Thursday, March 14, 2019

An Old Nerd Enjoyed Captain Marvel But It’s Been A Week And You Probably Enjoyed It Too

FEEL THE GLOW.
Look, people. Marvel makes Marvel movies the way they make Marvel movies. Captain Marvel is a Marvel movie. If you’re tired of Marvel movies, I can’t help you with that. I can’t help that we live in a time where a company is making three superhero movies a year with a level of craft and a respect for the genre that we literally never saw before Iron Man came out and you’re mad because you’re bored. Details (spoiler free) after the jump.

An Old Nerd Was Older, But Not Wiser Enough To Skip WWE Fastlane

Fuckin’ Ricochet, man.
Fastlane felt weird, impromptu, and sloppy. At least two matches happened that weren’t announced or announced differently, a lot of botches and sloppy work across the board (or sloppy camera work that caught things we shouldn’t have seen), and very little was enjoyable.

Saturday, March 9, 2019

An Old Nerd Gets Very Vaguely Spoilery In Order To Be Ambivalent About Umbrella Academy

Be advised that the actual show is way less colorful and high contrast than this.
Continuing a run through Netflix genre drama, I’ve now watched the first season of The Umbrella Academy, and it’s... fine? There are no explicit spoilers ahead, but I have to complain about things that will allow you to figure out plot points in advance as you watch it. But you kinda don’t need to watch it.

An Old Nerd Gets His Fastlane Predictions In Before He’s Even Older

No, really, the team o the right stands a chance. What?
It’s WWE Fastlane! Or, as it’s known to people who watch it, “A bonus episode of Raw and Smackdown to set up Wrestlemania that they make you pay for!” Wrestlemania plans generally make Fastlane easy to predict, but WWE’s lack of attention to all but a few stories muddies the waters a bit.

Friday, March 1, 2019

An Old Nerd Watched Russian Doll And Promises Not To Spoil It For You

An intence four hours.
  bIt’s difficult to talk about Netflix’s series, Russian Doll without talking about Russian Doll, because it’s a good idea to know as little as possible about Russian Doll before you watch it. And I’m going to be the latest person to try and convince you to watch it. But here goes.

An Old Nerd Is All In For Kofi And Lynch

This better be part of a story.
Elimination Chamber happened a while back, and like much of the WWE of late, it excelled when it’s most exciting stars were on screen and was OK to dull when they weren’t 

Saturday, February 16, 2019

An Old Nerd Wonders Where The LIghts Will Stop

A thing is happening on The Road!
They call it the Road To Wrestlemania, which is apt, because much like any road to an exciting destination, it’s pretty boring, and if something happens to change your trip it’s probably because something’s gone horribly wrong.

Anyway, Elimination Chamber is the first stop on the Road, and at least, unlike Fastlane, it has an important thing happening and an elaborate, ridiculous structure for it to happen in.

Thursday, February 7, 2019

An Old Nerd Stayed Up Way Past His Bedtime To Watch The Entire Royal Rumble

Oh yeah. That’s the stuff.
Goddamn. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I liked most of what happened at the Royal Rumble. I just didn’t like how long it took or how much it dragged making its way to the results I was mostly but not entirely OK with.

Monday, February 4, 2019

The Old Nerd Enjoyed Takeover Phoenix More THan He Expected

I’m still a Bel-ieve-air.
Desptie having a tough time with the predictions, I ended up doing way better than I thought I did. And the show was better than I was expecting, although once again a Takeover main event got outshone by the rest of the card.

Saturday, January 26, 2019

An Old Nerd Is Emotionally Prepared To Rumble

HEAD SLAPPING TIME
I am, in many ways, ready to Rumble. The two battle royals can be so much dumb fun when they don’t ruin it, plus there are a few solid matches on the main card. Predictions!

An Old Nerd Predicts Another Takeover Badly

IT HAS FANGS FOR SOME REASON
I’m excited for this Takeover because it’s a Takeover, and I like most of the people involved, but I’m not super into any of the stories this time around. Well, except one. And the predictions are gonna be ROUGH.