Weekly Wrasslin' Wroundup (NXT)

This didn't last long.

It's Dusty Tourney Time. The first one wasn't as successful as I thought it could be, so I hope they've learned some lessons for the second.

Motherfuckin' Lucha Underground! (Brothers In Broken Arms)

Snitches Get Piledrivers

Another rock-solid week of Lucha Underground - a slightly underwhelming main event, but more than made up for by the rest of the show.

Weekly Wrasslin' Wroundup (SD Live) of

SPOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOKY

No, seriously, this Randy Orton / Bray Wyatt shit is the dumbest thing that's ever happened with a Wyatt. Including them stealing the souls of Kane and the Undertaker for like two weeks.

Weekly Wrasslin' Wroundup (Raw)

35 minutes to gget to this.

Why watch debates when you can read a quick recap the next day? Sure, that logic also applies to Raw, but it was marginally less painful than the alternative, right?

Clash Of Champions 2016

I do love me a well-thought-out entrance.

Clash of Champions was a surprisingly good show from a wrestling standpoint. Where it fell down was a general lack of drama and some weird booking choices, especially one in particular. Still, a more solid event than I was expecting, which is nice.

@midnight Power Rankings (Sept 19-22)

Donald Trump, with Illuminati By Marriage Chris Hardwick

I gotta say, I went into this Donald Trump themed week of @midnight with a fair amount of trepidation. Anthony Atamanuik has one of the best Trumps in the biz, especially in a longer-form setting, but it's the kind of thing that'd get real old, real fast. But Atamanuik knocked it out of the fucking park over and over again, and he was used judiciously enough that even over four days, each appearance was a treat.

Motherfuckin' Lucha Underground (Ultimate Opportunity)

NOT THE PICTURE I WANTED.

Between Apple removing the ability to screencap video in iOS 10 and now somehow iTunes not having this ep of Lucha Underground like they're supposed to on Thursday, they are really fucking with my mojo. Luckily, this episode was great and available on demand.

Oh, The Metahumanity! (9/20)

FEEL MY SADS

The fall superhero season officially kicks off with Agents of SHILD's fourth season premiere. Luke Cage next week, then the CW kicks into gear in October and I have to decide about Legends of Tomorrow for real.

Weekly Wrasslin' Wroundup (SD Live)

Apollo is not benefiting from the brand split.

Two weeks before another Smackdown PPV? This is not going to go well from a content burnout perspective, I don't think. The WWE's problem has never been Not Enough Content.

Oh, The Metahumanity! (Obligatory Wrapup)

OK. The premiere of Agents of SHIELD is on my DVR right now, so I guess I'd better talk about the last three episodes of Powers, which I've been putting off and/or haven't been getting around too.

Powers: "Chasing Ghosts", "Slain Dragons", and "Legacy" (35% Stupid)

Ultimately, these three episodes encapsulate more of what I don't like about Powers than what I do. I like the setting. I like the story they're telling. I like the characters and I like a handful of the actors. But they way they've been telling the story is a goddamned mess.

The last three episodes covered the fall of The Ghost, the madness of Super Shock, and the ascendance of the Baby Heroes, but managed to throw Pilgrim getting powers, getting killed, coming back to life, and then Walker getting killed into the whole thing. it's all disjointed and scattered, clearly suffers from them not knowing they were going to be cancelled, and asks more of a LOT of the actors than they're either willing or able to provide.

And it's a shame, because the story isn't awful. How do you stop the most powerful being on the planet when he goes insane? The ultimate solution isn't great, but it's passable, once you get past the acting. And the stuff they set up for a nonexistent third season - powered Deena, and a hint at some of the weird shit Powers got into in its later volumes about the nature of powers and where they come from, is interesting stuff, if handled deftly. But they don't handle it deftly, so it's tough to get excited about. Or sad about there not being more.

Apres this, THE DELUGE.

Weekly Wrasslin' Wrouindups (Raw)

Shockingly, this isn't Sin Cara or Kalisto jobbing.

There's a PPV this Sunday! Clash of Champions! It's special! It's like your birthday, if you had nineteen birthdays a year and only one out of every five pieces of cake had frosting on it. Anyway, there was a Raw on Monday, featuring the DAWN OF THE CRUISERWEIGHTS.

@midnight Power Rankings (Sept 12-15)

Very much a Slacker's B- week on @midnight. Mediocre episodes, unnecessary but largely neutral format changes in response to the time slot change. Notable exceptions include Chelsea Davidson, who put some effort in and won the week, Jeff Tweedy, who had an excuse for being low-key and did better than you'd expect a musician to, and on the other end of the episode, Adam Ray, who came out of the gate with barely ironic racism and that's gonna put me off you for the full 22 minutes.

1. Chelsea Davidson (W)
2. Moshe Kasher (T)
3. Michelle Buteau (M)
4. Aisling Bea (T)
5. David Koechner (Th)
6. Kate Walsh (M)
7. Jim Jefferies (M)
8. Jen Kirkman (Th)
9. Jeff Tweedy (Th)
10. Amir K (W)
11. Chris Delia (T)
12. Adam Ray (W)

All four episodes were fine. None I'd seek out, but none particularly memorable. Worth watching if for no other reason than you probably want to acclimate to the format tweaks.

1. Monday
2. Wednesday
3. Tuesday
4. Thursday

Weekly Wrasslin' Wroundup (CWC/NXT)

Excellent choice, WWE. Son't fuck this up.

 With a two hour live finale that no, I didn't watch live, the Cruiserweight Classic earns the top spot this week, crowning a winner and adding a surprise twist to the proceedings.

Motherfuckin' Lucha Underground! (The Amulet)

Damn, son.

First, I'd like to thank Apple for removing the ability to screengrab purchased videos in iOS 10. That's going to make my life much more difficult, because the Internet and I rarely agree on what images should be grabbed from Lucha Underground.

OK, there is a shit-ton to unpack in this week's Lucha Underground, plus one amazing match, one necessary match, and one pointless match. Goddamn, though.

Weekly Wrasslin' Wroundup (SD Live)

All New, All Different Jack Swagger?

Backlash is over, and Smackdown Live is dealing with the consequences! Well, some of the consequences! Well, two of the consequences. OK, we're just setting up a couple of championship matches for No Mercy and we're repackaging Jack Swagger so he and Jinder Mahal and Bo Dallas can start Social Outcasts 2.0 in 18 months.

Rocket League: Rumble Mode

Good, but not as good as... you know.

We've been playing Rocket League since it came out, and we're still playing it. Local splitscreen only, and infrequently, so none of us are particularly good at it, but who cares? It's a shit-ton of fun, and with all of us within a narrow range of abilities, matches are competitive, insane, and fun as fuuuuuuuck.

Stone Knives And Bearskins

This picture contains two lies. Spot them to pass the nerd test.

After many years, my Logitech Harmony 700 has given up the ghost.

I've been a fan, nay, dependent on the Harmony series for a very long time. I have a lot of equipment. The equipment changes on an occasional-to-regular basis. A universal remote is one of those nerd quality of life things that one perhaps, takes for granted.

I'm not taking it for granted now. And while I am truly aware of the relattive scope of this problem, I've still been forced to rever to manually powering on my TV and receiver, manually switching inputs on my HDMI switchbox, using an older X1 remote for cable channels, volume, and mute, and my receiver's remote for input switching. Oh, and my brain for input REMEMBERING, which is a whole other fucking nightmare. Oh, and an XBox One controller for Amazon Prime video. Like a goddamned animal.

On the upside, replacement means upgrade, at least once the disposable income stack recharges to a comfortable level. Until then, pity me.

Weekly Wraswslin' Wroundup (Raw)

HAVE YOU SEEN ME?

Another lackluster Raw this week, with a lot of character reintroductions that aren't working and weird midcard feuds that aren't going anywhere. But at least they addressed the most pressing issue facing the WWE of late, the inability of The Clerb to do comedy.

WWE Backlash 2016

It sucks to be Bray Wyatt.

OK. The amount of effort I'm willing to put into the seven bonus brand-specific PPV's the WWE has added to their schedule is less than complete, so I'm just going to see how my predictions went and talk a bit about the matches.

@midnight Power Rankings (Sept 6-8)

ROLL TIDE!

If you're gonna come back from a long hiatus, it's tough to argue with last Tuesday's @midnight lineup. Three of the greats, each with their own unique styles. The dark brilliance of Kyle Kinane, the goofy brilliance of Ron Funches, and the nonsense-free brilliance of Tiffany Haddish. Kinane just edged it out in the top spot, though, with an astonishing performance in the Jeff Foxworthy speed round.

1. Kyle Kinane (T)
2. Ron Funches (T)
3. Tiffany Haddish (T)
4. James Davis (W)
5. Mary Lynn Rajskub (W)
6. Adam Goldberg (W)
7. Randy Sklar (Th)
8. Jason Sklar (Th)
9. Esther Povitsky (Th)

Watch Tuesday's, obviously. Thursday's is the most skippable of the three, but the week starts amazing and by the end it's only down to Average Decent @midnight, so only if you're desperate for time.

1. Tuesday
2. Wednesday
3. Thursday

Weekly Wrasslin' Wroundup (NXT/CWC)

The problem with NXT is that it is constantly trying to serve two purposes and only has an hour to do it. It needs to give people time on TV to practice and introduce them to the hardcore fans, and it needs to be a professional wrestling show with stories and matches that mean things. The CWC doesn't have that problem, because it doesn't have stories, but that is a problem in and of itself when the matches can't tell a really compelling story on their own.

SEGA Saturday: Sonic R

You may, in your life, wondered what percentage of the population is Super Sonic Racing. Well, Sega would like to inform you that that percentage is 100%. Everybody. Everybody. Everybody. Everybody's Super Sonic Racing.



The game is awful, by the way. An early joint by Travellers Tales before they went on to make ALL THE LEGO GAMES. But the soundtrack is six tracks of pure gold.

Monthly Free Games (Sept 2016)

The best free game this month has a lot of balls.

This isn't an awful month for free games, especially on the PS4, but a lot of the offerings cater to very specific tastes. Like a taste for the world's most boring wrestling game.

Motherfuckin' Lucha Underground! (Wheel Of Misfortune)

He thought htis up himself!

SEASON THREE! SEASON THREE! SEASON THREE!

Weekly Wrasslin' Wroundup (SD Live)

Guess they're the BOOSOS now.

I'll be honest, this is pretty perfunctory. I've got the Lucha Underground post ready to go next, and it was so very much more better than this week's Smackdown. But we have a PPV coming up, because now there are nineteen of the fucking things every year. So here's the final buildup.

Star Trek: Beyond

BMTreX

I had a very difficult time giving a shit about Star Trek: Beyond, which is why it took me this long to see it. I don't know why. It may have been lingering Into Darkness disappointment. It may have been the trailers with the motorcycle and the revelation that after doing Khan in the second movie they were destroying the Enterprise in the third movie. But even the knowledge that Simon Pegg was writing the script didn't drive me to want to go see it. Nor did positive reviews from friends.

Weekly Wrasslin' Wroundup (Raw)

No, seriously, this went on for ten minutes.

Were you hoping to hear from HHH about why he turned on Seth Rollins last week and handed the Universal Championship to Kevin Owens? Wondering what's going on with the United States Championship? Well, fuck you. Raw this week was HHH-less championship fallout, women's division scheming, filler matches in the upper midcard, and tedious bullshit. Way to make me look even more forward to the Lucha Underground Season 3 premiere, WWE.

Oh, The Metahumanity! (Back To Powers)

D'oh! Boy!

Getting there. Powers is still pretty good, sometimes very good, and never really great. Three more left.

Weekly Wrasslin' Wroundup (NXT/CWC)

WE ARE BURNING HAMMERS

NXT is back to establishing and re-establishing talent this week, which makes for a dull show. Luckily, the CWC quarterfinals are here to showcase amazing wrestling action until Lucha Underground returns next week.