Hi there, Jake here. I am in the process of getting acquainted with the new cruiserweight division and doing my best to learn about these men and their movesets and personalities. This is something I call “Today I Learned” and will bullet point things that I’ve discovered from my own observations and from what is presented on the show.
Today I Learned…
- Mauro is always excited, he is never lower or higher than 10.
Gran Metalik vs. Zack Sabre Jr.
- The theme songs for these wrestlers are THE MOST BASIC. I wonder if CFO$ creates these theme songs too?
- I have a favorite wrestling style and that is the technical/catch-point style. There is something historical about that style of wrestling that adds to the realism that wrestling tries to create.
- Metalik wrestles like his car his double parked.
- Zack Sabre Jr. must have gone to school to be a doctor because he seems to know everybody part and how to create the most pain to the specific parts. It would be scary to wrestle that guy, he could get a job at Auntie Annies for how well he can twist limbs like a pretzel.
- After Metalik’s reverse slingblade I half expected to see the W-O-R-M THE WORM!! Years of facebuster conditioning I guess.
- I have grown to think that yay/boo spots are stale. If you are trying to present professional wrestling as a real fight where both men want to win.. Why would you not protect yourself if you’re getting punched? I mean you throw a punch, why would you just sit and wait unguarded to see what the opponent would do? Could you imagine a boxing or mma fighter doing that? Defense wins fights as much as offense.
- Even after reading the results, I am still surprised that Metalik won the match.
Kota Ibushi vs. TJ Perkins
- TJ Perkins is able to front flip his hood onto his head. How many times do you need to practice that so the hood flips onto your head every time?
- The crowd is excited for everything on the show, which translates well through the television and creates a sense of excitement in me, even though I am sitting alone in a quiet house.
- I don’t care how talented you are, falling backwards to the outside scares me.
- Cruiserweight wrestling is like the most extreme version of doing trust falls.
- Daniel Bryan doesn’t know what “never” means. He shows this by saying “TJ Perkins never gets tired, and look at him breathing heavy.”
- I learned that I question myself when using punctuation and quotation marks. Does the period come before or after the last quotation?
- The yay/boo spot in this match makes it seem like a real fight!! Ducking and dodging punches while landing blows simultaneously.
- When a match is as good as Perkins/Ibushi, I lose myself in the action like Eminem loses himself in the music. I forget everything around me and in my head and live in the moment of the match.
- After Perkins wins, the reaction was like what a reaction would be to the finals of the tournament and it was only the semi-finals.
Noam Dar and Cedric Alexander vs. Tommaso Ciampa and Johnny Gargano
- Noam Dar seems to like Alexander’s music better than he likes his own.
- Ciampa and HHH had the same trainer for professional wrestling in on Killer Kowalski.
- I may never see someone dodge an outside dive by moving out of the way instead of just standing and catching the man flying through the air.
- I am amazed that more legs aren’t bruised from all the leg slapping. Is that kind of like a callous that builds up? I’ll slap my leg every now and then and it still stings.
- I understand the term Fireworks Factory better now because of the amount of “Oooh’s and Aaah’s” I heard during this match.
- The WWE Cruiserweight style should just be called Indie Style because there is so much going on with so many high impact moves that don’t seem to do much damage.
- Gargano and Ciampa win and Mauro call them Team D.I.Y.
T.J. Perkins vs. Gran Metalik
- After winning the semi-finals both men won a medal. If they win this they get a trophy and a Cruiserweight Title. That is a lot of hardware for one tournament.
- The biggest surprise pop of the night came to HHH who came out before the bell rang.
- Watching masked wrestlers makes me appreciate body language in wrestling. It’s usually all about the facial expressions which means masked men have to go above and beyond in the way they display emotions through body language. That must be part of the reason Sami Zayn is so well versed in getting sympathy with his selling. He wrestled as El Generico for so long that he learned how to tell a story without facial expressions. Now he is maskless and can accent his body language with his facial expressions.
- Perkins seemed to have learned from Zack Sabre Jr. because Sabre Jr. worked over Metalik’s neck for most of the match so Perkins continued the work Zack had started.
- TJ Perkins is able to chew gum throughout his matches.. I have a hard time not swallowing my gum after it loses flavor and TJ is able to chew gum while getting twisted into submissions and slammed into the mat. Which begs the question… how often has TJ Perkins swallowed his gum in the ring?
- Metalik drops an elbow from the top rope as well or dare I say better than Macho Man Randy Savage. Blasphemous? Possibly.
- The Yay/Boo in this spot is of the hit and wait variety, which means Ibushi is the man behind the realistic sequence from his bout with Perkins.
- Perkins applies the kneebar and when he crosses the leg of his opponent it creates the same feeling as when Angle would grapevine the leg during an ankle lock.
- Perkins is the first CWC winner and Cruiserweight Champion. He also has sick looking welts on his shoulder. Those were from slaps and chops, which begs the question, WHY DON’T THE LEGS BRUISE?!?
Today I Learned… That we witnessed something special over these last 13 weeks. This may be talked about for years to come if not decades. It’s weird witnessing history in the making because the gravity of the situation doesn’t set in for years and years. This is the foundation of a movement and we were all here for it.
If you have any comments or observations be sure to shoot us a tweet on the Twittah Machine. Thank you for reading.
My name is Jake and that is all I know… for now.
Passion For Wrestling 