MoeGates
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|  #1 Posted on 24.6.17 1634.53
Reposted on: 24.6.24 1634.53 | We start it out with Swann announcing he's in the Main Event vs. Neville, & Titus coming by to recruit Tozawa (& tell Swann he needs to do something with his hair - disagree). Titus has a cool pink & light grey thing going on (with lapel flower!!) that I dig. Titus has got to be spending as much money on wardrobe as Gallagher at this point. The main effect of this segment is to show how absolutely tiny the cruiserweights look next to a guy like Titus.
Wait, when did Phillips leave 205 Live? We've got some jabroni named (I think) Vic Joseph next to Graves? He's got a horrible pastel plaid tie that is going to be what we cringe at when we look back at 2017 fashion in 2025. Graves is going for a very modest (for him) charcoal & light pink look. Hmmm - maybe he's using Titus's haberdasher.
Gentleman Jackie G is out with William III & red & black tights. For those of you who haven't yet, check out Jack (Gallagher) Claffey's two MMA fights that are on YouTube. We get a recap of Nese, Aires, and Gallagher's segment on Raw, and Tony Nese is out as his opponent. I hate how they announce him as from "Long Island, NY" which is not a city.
Match is entertaining. Gallagher does a weird "fold himself in a ball & then flip Nese spot" and Nese hits a thing where he drapes Gallagher in the tree of woe & then kicks him repeatedly while doing situps. Gallagher reverses out of the one-armed suplex w/ flex & hits a double-underhook suplex that looks like it came a within a hair's breath of breaking Nese's neck. Head butt! Ending comes when Nese fakes a shoulder injury, throws Jackie G into the bottom turnbuckle (well the bottom rope, after which Gallagher crawls into the bottom turnbuckle) & hits the running Nese. Stupid ending to a nice match. Nese lost his man-bun in there somewhere & I have to say he looks a lot better with the hair down.
Backstage is Dar, Cedric, & Alicia Fox on videochat. Jesus, this angle is still going? Gah. Turns out Dar thought he threw Cedric's bag in the river, but it turns out it was Ariyah Daivari's. Daivari looks fantastic. He's doing the rich ostentatious foreigner gimmick 1000x better than Jinder. Dar, on the other hand, really needs to get some fashion lessons. There's no excuse, most people on 205 Live dress fantastic, he could easily get some pointers. Maybe that can be his next angle instead of the neverending Alicia Fox thing.
Recap of Ali/Gulak feud, which they sell as the absolute most generic face/heel feud ever (Sample dialogue from Ali: "Drew Gulak is a bully. I hate bullies. I fight bullies").
What do we want? Ground-based offense! When do we want it? Now! Gulak is kind of killing this character, and the clean-shaven look definitely helps. Too bad he's doing this feud against Ali instead of Swann.
Gulak proposes a no-fly zone which gets him a dropkick & a tope with a twist thing that I'm sure has an actual name (where's Ranallo when you need him?).
Hey, wait a minute, this match is pretty good. Ali is throwing in a lot more actual high-flying offense instead of just doing forward rolls every once in a while, and the whole high-flying vs. mat wrestling story is working really well. Is this Ali improving or changing something or is Gulak carrying him? Or is is just a "styles makes fights" thing? They do an elbow injury story also, & Ali actually has a little hardway blood on it, so I wonder if that wasn't improvised. Ending comes when Gulak catches Ali's missile dropkick & attempts to turn him into a Boston Crab, but Ali manages to roll him up in a really nifty pinning combination, beating Gulak at his own (ground) game. Nice match, great ending, love the story line. I was really thinking Mustafa Ali was getting to Noam Dar levels of uselessness on this show, but this match very well may have changed my mind on him.
Aires talks to Gallagher backstage while eating a banana. What is it with Aires & bananas? What a strange gimmick.
Swann & TJP converse backstage in a segment I think is suppose to be setting up TJP's turn back to babyface, but can't quite tell.
Main event time! But wait - first out is Akira Tozawa to take his front row seat courtesy of Titus Brand! Tozawa's wearing a suit with a tie that looks straight out the wardobe department of "The people vs OJ Simpson."
Neville comes out first & stares down Tozawa at ringside. Swann doesn't do his in-ring dance moves, which is how we know this is a Very Serious Match.
Nice match, although Swann completely messes up a headscissors by getting both of his legs on one shoulder, but Neville sells it anyway. Hilarious moment when a fan takes a flash photo right in Neville's face when they're on the outside. Neville glares at him & says something I can't make out. I would have loved to see what, say, Scott Steiner would have done with a moment like that.
Swann has some great offense I haven't seen before, including an EXCELLENT high head kick & a reverse fisherman's powerbomb thing (or "modified Michinoku driver" according to the new announcer - gah, cannot wait to get Ranallo back). Ending comes when Swann misses a Phoenix Splash that's an absolute thing of beauty & Neville locks in the Rings of Saturn for the tapout, and immediately goes & glares at Tozawa likes he's sizing up how he might taste with a nice chianti & a side of fava beans.
Had a few weeks off, but really glad I'm back on the 205 Live bandwagon. A decent amount of wasted backstage time, and some of these angles (continuous Dar/Fox love triangle primarily) really have to go, but the wrestling was uniformly great this week.
(edited by MoeGates on 24.6.17 1750) | Promote this thread! |             | Chumpstain
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|  #2 Posted on 26.6.17 1732.22
Reposted on: 26.6.24 1732.23 | Originally posted by MoeGates
Aires talks to Gallagher backstage while eating a banana. What is it with Aires & bananas? What a strange gimmick.
A couple of years ago on the wrestling forum at Reddit, someone created a thread speculating that there had to be wrestlers reading the forums there for feedback, and suggested that whoever was actually doing so find a way to mention a banana on-air for a segment to acknowledge it.
Aries joined NXT a few months after that, and in one of his first backstage interviews there, he had a banana. The forum at Reddit exploded. It could, of course, be completely coincidental. A couple of weeks later on NXT, in another backstage interview with his banana, Aries said he was getting his daily fix of potassium. He's claimed ignorance whenever asked about it on Twitter. But the banana persists.
Here's a few links if you want to pursue the conspiracy...
https://www.reddit.com/r/SquaredCircle/comments/3jtxae/crazy_idea_if_there_are_wwe_wrestlerswriters/
https://twitter.com/AustinAries/status/740728116742651904
https://www.reddit.com/r/SquaredCircle/comments/4n8r75/takeover_spoiler_austin_aries_nxttakeovertheend/ | Toast Jr
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| #3 Posted on 28.6.17 1628.04
Reposted on: 28.6.24 1628.09 | Are we finally talking about Austin Aries's banana? Because I have a lot of thoughts on the topic. In fact, it consumes me.
1. Aries opens his bananas upside down! How is this a thing? I wouldn't have thought it was possible, but we have seen him do it on live TV. Why would you do that? Is there a secret benefit? The long stem makes opening bananas so easy! Why would someone deliberately make opening a banana harder?
2. Waiting for Aries to toss his banana peel on the ramp for someone to comically pratfall is killing me. Throw the damn peel already! The anticipation will be the death of me. It seems like a natural fit for the new Aries-Gallagher alliance. Boys, don't let me down.
3. Where is my Austin Aries "Banana in the Pocket, Thumb in the Eye" t-shirt? This is a thing I would pay officially licensed WWE t-shirt money for.
4. Most importantly: Several times, Aries has come down to the ring eating a banana and handed his peel to a kid in the crowd, much the way one would hand out sunglasses or a towel. THIS IS PURE MADNESS! Think about it. What is that kid going to do now? You can't throw the peel away, Austin Aries gave it you. Do you just hang on to it? What do you do with it? How do you preserve it? I've held an empty banana peel for like 5 minutes while looking for a trash can, and it gets gross real quick. Let's say the kid gets the peel at the main event of 205 Live. He still has to hold that peel for a good 20 minutes of match. Forget if it's a match buried mid-RAW; he could be holding it for hours. Then, you still have to get out of the arena, to your car, out of the parking lot and make it home. You are looking at a minimum of 2 hours with a gross banana peel, and 4 is more realistic. By the time you make it home it going to pretty damn late- midnight if you are lucky. Assuming you do have shellac or similar handy, are you really going to preserve a banana peel at 2am? Do you leave it out all night? Put it in the fridge or freezer to turn to mush? The mystery of the ringside banana peel gift has kept me up at night. If anyone has any solutions to this, I would love to hear them.
Also 205 had three really fun matches. You should watch them. | KJames199
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| #4 Posted on 29.6.17 0813.30
Reposted on: 29.6.24 0813.30 | Originally posted by Toast Jr
Aries opens his bananas upside down! How is this a thing? I wouldn't have thought it was possible, but we have seen him do it on live TV. Why would you do that? Is there a secret benefit?
Try it. It's way easier. Just pinch the tip and it splits open, making it easy to peel.
Also, if you've never written on a(n unpeeled) banana with a ballpoint pen, you should. | | ALL ORIGINAL POSTS IN THIS THREAD ARE NOW AVAILABLE |
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