The Autumn 2020 Wrestling Thread! Featuring: The G1 Climax! AEW hoovering talent and taking pop shots at Vince! The road to Survivor Series!

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Hello and welcome to Autumn Wrestling Thread 2020!

So with Full Gear still a few weeks away 7th November and me admittedly not being the best to fill in the gaps for AEW I’ll let @Ruffers/@colossalhorse fill us in there.

Over in Fed land, we have two NXT Takeovers to round out the year (Oct 4th and Dec 6th) and the hilariously unfortunately titled NXT UK TAKEOVER: DUBLIN, which will take the same place as Hell in a Cell (October 25th). The main roster will close out the year with Survivor Series (Nov 22nd) & TLC (Dec 20th).

But before all that, we go to Clash of Champions this Sunday which features a card of:

Asuka vs Zelina Vega (Raw Women’s Title, pre-show)
Bobby Lashley vs Apollo Crews (U.S Title Match)
The Street Profits vs Andrade & Angel Garza (Raw Tag Titles)
Cesaro & The Big Nacker vs Lucha House Party (Smackdown Tag Titles)
Nia Jax & Shayna Bayzler vs The Riott Squad (Women’s Tag Titles)
Jeff Hardy vs Aj Styles vs Sami Zayn (Intercontinental Title triple threat)
Bayley vs Nikki Cross (Smackdown Women’s Title)
Roman Reigns (w/ Paul Heyman) vs Jey Uso (Universal Title Match)
Drew McIntyre vs Randy Orton (Ambulance Match for WWE Championship)

Which is… certainly a card. I’ll admit, Im pretty interested to see where they go with Reigns, hope he turns monster heel on Uso and the IC triple threat should be fun. Otherwise… meh?

More excitedly IT’S G1 CLIMAX TIME!!! And not just that, the 30th edition. The Round robin tournament started at the weekend just there and will conclude Sunday 18th October. Here are the groups:

Top-Bottom, L-R:
Kota Ibushi - (Taguchi Japan) 6th entry, 4th consecutive. 2019 G1 winner
Jeff Cobb - (Suzuki-Gun) 2nd entry, 2nd consecutive
Kazuchika Okada - (CHAOS) 9th entry, 9th consecutive, 2012, 2014 G1 winner
Tomohiro Ishii - (CHAOS) 8th entry, 8th consecutive. NEVER Openweight 6-Man Tag Team Champion
Will Ospreay - (CHAOS) 2nd entry, 2nd consecutive
Shingo Takagi - (LiJ) 2nd entry, 2nd consecutive
Minoru Suzuki - (Suzuki-Gun) 9th entry, first in two years. NEVER Openweight Champion
Taichi - (Suzuki-Gun) 2nd entry, 2nd consecutive IWGP Tag Team Champion
Jay White - (Bullet Club) 3rd entry, 3rd consecutive
Yujiro Takahashi - (Bullet Club) 7th entry, first in five years

Hiroshi Tanahashi - (Taguchi Japan) 19th entry, 19th consecutive. 2007, 2015, 2018 G1 winner
Juice Robinson - (Taguchi Japan) 4th entry, 4th consecutive
Hirooki Goto - (CHAOS) 13th entry, 13th consecutive. NEVER Openweight 6-Man Tag Team Champion. 2008 G1 winner
Toru Yano - (CHAOS) 15th entry, 14th consecutive. Provisional KOPW2020
YOSHI-HASHI - (LiJ) 4th entry, first in two years. NEVER Openweight 6-Man Tag Team Champion
Tetsuya Naito - (LiJ) 11th entry, 11th consecutive. IWGP Intercontinental & Heavyweight Champion. 2013, 2017 G1 winner
SANADA - (LiJ) 5th entry, 5th consecutive
Zack Sabre Jr. - (Suzuki-Gun) 4th entry, 4th consecutive. IWGP Tag Team Champion
KENTA - (Bullet Club) 2nd entry, 2nd consecutive. IWGP United States Heavyweight Championship right to challenge holder
EVIL - (Bullet Club) 5th entry, 5th consecutive

Everyone fights each other in their Block (2pts for a win, 1pt for a draw, 0pts for a loss) with the two group winners meeting in the final 18th October. The first round of matches were pretty great with Ibushi and Naito winning the early main events, one would expect Okada & Tanahashi will be still be up there towards the tournament’s climax. EVIL having just dropped the title you’d expect would be too, however he lost his opening match to ZSJ - who is therefore already off to a better start than last year KENTA and Jay White are ones to watch from Bullet Club, Suzuki is always dangerous, and who knows, maybe this is Ospreay’s year?

Next matches take place Wednesday (A Block, Ibushi vs Jay White main event) & Thursday (B Block, Naito vs Zack Sabre Jr. main event) and pretty much roll on three day intervals. WORLD CUP!

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I can’t decide who’s winning the G1 but after the first round I’d be so psyched if they go with Suzuki (it probably won’t be but still).
Having Ospreay and White back does flesh out the roster well, but honestly as long as they keep it away from EVIL I’ll be happy. I think KENTA is a sleeper pick, and they’ll give some token big wins to Will and ZSJ but they won’t get too far.

Kind of incredible how good Tanahashi, Ishii etc still are in their mid 40s but do feel like they need to stop relying on Tana so heavily.

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Yeah it’s kind of any body’s game this year, plenty of potential picks. Intrigued that ZSJ is headlining on thursday after just beating the former champ onto the current one. While I think KENTA will do well his ensured match with Moxley suggests he probably doesn’t need it booking wise. But yeah it would be amazing if its Suzuki

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as someone who hasn’t really paid attention to WWE since WM, WHAT on EARTH is going on? Reigns is a Heyman guy? Why’s he fighting an Uso? Is it him vs. Rocky next year then?

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Paul’s in charge of Roman’s booking on smackdown and he’s turned him heel and made himself the mouthpiece. It’s not as interesting as it sounds, a WR match with Rock would be undoubtedly huge but it’d more likely be Brock depending on if he goes to UFC, or even another Cena return.

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jey won a battle royal to be the number one contender, roman is playing it as “may the best man win” to his face, but is going to fucking murder him. it’s great

really like what heyman is doing. he’s doing the same role as with brock, but in a different way, much less bombastic, almost as if he is scared of him

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smackdown is really good now, what with this and the bayley/sasha stuff. sounds like raw is still the drizzling shits though. lost it a bit earlier listening to meltzer talking about tozawa being eaten by a shark

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Again?!

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think you could have that reaction to the whole card pretty much no?

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Well, since you asked…

AEW is still in PPV fallout mode atm. Mox has to face Lance Archer in one of their between-PPV mega-Dynamite cards in a couple of weeks, which you’d expect Mox to win. Who he’ll be fighting at Full Gear is up in the air - will the Archer thing continue? Will MJF demand a rematch for the contract breaking finish at All Out? Will the return of The Cleaner see Omega in a re-run of last year’s Full Gear match? It’s anyone’s guess atm. I expect Kenny will end up fighting Hangman but I wouldn’t be surprised if they kept them apart for a while yet. AEW does like to let things marinate, sometimes frustratingly so.

The only thing that seems set for Full Gear is the Bucks Vs FTR, though the Bucks turning heel makes that awkward. It’s gonna happen though and the belts aren’t moving till it does so the stacked tag division feels like it’s in stasis. That match better be worth it. In the women’s division Thunder Rosa is sticking around for a bit, which is great, but no one seems sure for how long. We’ll probably get another Nyla v Shida match at Full Gear, which suits me as the last one was great. Unless Britt is fit again, in which case she’ll probably be involved one way or another. Sigh.

This week’s Dynamite* looks like it should be fun (though it has zero chance of topping last week’s tbh) with Orange Cassidy getting a shot at Brodie’s TNT belt and a fun looking 6 man tag with Mox/Will Hobbs/Darby Allen Vs Archer/Cage/Starks. Really pleased Hobbs is getting such a push - he’s a bit green but he’s got bags of potential and already has a monster of a spinebuster in his arsenal. Love a good spinebuster.

Elsewhere Jericho continues to tag with Hager in the team no one wanted, Eddie Kingston is heading up an entirely directionless faction with The Butcher and the Blade and the Lucha Bros (though there were hints at the Butcher and the Blade getting Allie back so they’ll probably end up fueding with Dustin/QT) and Miro, Kip and Penelope Ford are doing a wedding angle for some reason. Bit of a mixed bag atm but with more than enough good stuff to make the nonsense bearable.

*there’s also a bonus shorter Dynamite on tonight which looks entirely pointless. Because 90 minutes of enhancement matches on Dark every week just aren’t enough.

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Tbf, it only exists because of NBA scheduling - was supposed to air last week if the playoffs went to match 7 instead of the normal show, so now they’re just throwing it out there as it already exists anyway

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Can’t believe they actually named a guy Slapjack

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should’ve gone the whole hog and brought back SLAPNUTS

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True, I can see why they made it and where it fit into the planned schedule. And tbf I thought it was 2 squash matches and Anna Jay Vs Brandi but I see Shaun Spears is fighting a non-jobber for the first time in months. So that’s a bit better I guess?

In addition to Dark though that’s 14 extra matches this week, and only 2 of those aren’t enhancement matches. You could argue I don’t have to watch them all. But I will. I have a problem.

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Also it’s pre-recorded so there’s no chance Sydal is gonna fall off the top rope again. Rubbish.

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so there was some headline earlier about her shooting on someone last week but the clip I saw looked fine? Like a little stiff sure but not something I’d obviously call a shoot?

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lol it’s an OSW reference for Shinsuke Nakamura, after they reviewed Fatal Deviation and called one of the jobbers “Umbro Knacker” and then realised this makes Shinsuke “The Big Knacker” (I can’t remember where the clip where they decide this is though so here’s their Fatal Deviation review)

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Yeah word was Ivalisse was doing some no selling and Rosa was not pleased and reacted accordingly. Brian Alvarez claims to have spoken to a bunch of AEW guys who say it’s nonsense. They’re due to face each other again in a tag match tomorrow so I’m inclined to believe it’s at least been overstated - it’d be mad to put them into the ring together straight away if it was all that bad. It didn’t look like they were shooting when I saw it anyways.

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I’m hoping the ppv will lead to Archer v Cage imploding, MJF getting a Mox rematch (poss with Darby included in a triple threat?), FTR/Bucks and Kenny v Page
I also kind of want to see the inner circle against itself now LAX lost the big one, but it may be too early for that

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I also wouldn’t be TOO surprised if Orange won the big one this week, boy would that rattle some cages :smiley:

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