A BATCH

WWE RAW 02/18/19: Ronda Rousey vs. Ruby Riott

Definitely glad that they ended up having a non-squash match after what happened at the PPV the night before, and it sure ended up being a good one! Ruby looked solid, but for the most part, this was the Ronda show; her selling for everything Ruby did was excellent & her times on the offense were explosive as usual. The highlight was that monkey flip bit with Ronda countering Ruby's control attempt into a killer armbar; very smooth & a nice sense/feel of urgency + danger. ***

WWE SmackDown 02/19/19: AJ Styles, Jeff Hardy & Kofi Kingston vs. Daniel Bryan, Randy Orton & Samoa Joe

This was very fun. Solid FIP work by both Jeff & Kofi, very good Kofi hot tag - popped for the "STUPID, STUPID" payoff after the flying clothesline to Orton - 10 YEARS WAITING ON THAT ONE! & then AJ's hot tag was even better - the AJ vs. Bryan sequences were great + the Kofi vs. Bryan finishing stretch ruled, too. ***1/4

Giant Baba 20th Memorial ~ Abdullah The Butcher Retirement Memorial Show: Daisuke Sekimoto & Kento Miyahara vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi & Yoshitatsu

Too long & pretty boring. The only stuff that I liked were Daisuke's hot tag & Daisuke's bits vs. Tanahashi. It's safe to say that DAISUKE was the MVP of the thing in my eyes. Kento wearing the OG Triple Crown was badass though. **

FCP Wrestle House 2019: Mark Davis vs. WALTER

The way this started off was wonderful; two heavyweight bruisers with history clashing in a great brawl that had a legitimate, authentic feel of chaos to it. WALTER delivers a mauling to Davis throughout, but Davis finds ways to escape & lashs out offense of his own - eventually he gets tired of WALTER's strikes, and goes after the arm. The guardrail bit w/ the stomps was great. Very good way to shift the control to Davis - his work over the arm is really good and WALTER sells it very well. The best moment of the match comes after a little bit of that armwork, as Davis gets a little too cocky & delivers a CHOP to the king of chops himself. WALTER has a great look of disgust & pride, and the crowd chants "you fucked up!" - WALTER gives Davis a couple of free shots in, but then it's punishment time. WALTER being WALTER & it's very lovely. Sadly that is when the match pretty much peaked, but they went like 10+ more minutes, and it started to drag pretty badly. I was zoning out for most of it; Davis didn't offer anything of note on the offense after the armwork was done, but at least everytime when WALTER started to lash out those chops, I got back into it. Good match overall w/ a great first half or so, but sadly, by the end, it overstayed it's welcome. Would've been a great 10-11 minute match. ***

wXw Road to 16 Carat Gold 2019: London: Absolute Andy vs. David Starr

Their Carat match was one of my favorite matches of 2018, and while this didn't come near to that one in it's quality, it was still really good. Both guys did their things w/ Andy on top for the majority of it, being the awesome cheating sleazebag veteran that he is & Starr ruled from underneath w/ his great selling & really good comebacks. A couple of standout moments were the Han Stansen lariat nearfall, and then the moment where Starr blocked Andy's desperation low blow attempt & answered to it with a straight up PUNCH to the face. ***1/2

wXw Dead End XVIII: Veit Müller vs. WALTER

A badass heavyweight underdog tale. WALTER sure made Müller earn all of his comebacks w/ his brutal beatdown, and all of those comebacks by Müller were real good. My favorite moment of the whole match was WALTER shutting down one of those by delivering a killer Shotgun Dropkick to Müller as he was running towards him. Overall lots of BEEFY fun, with a very good dynamic throughout. My first time actually seeing Müller in action, and it sure was one to remember. ***3/4