The Wrestling Section

Before I start this, I feel like I need to clarify this; I love All Elite Wrestling. I genuinely think it is the best weekly wrestling show there is right now. And while it's not perfect, the majority of what is put on TV is at least good, in my opinion. That being said, AEW has had quite a few missteps since starting up. The Dark Order was dead on arrival before Brodie Lee showed up and resuscitated the group, Miro came in with a lot of hype following his WWE release, but his booking seriously underwhelmed until he broke away from Kip Sabian, and of course... That. However, the biggest issue that AEW has had since its inception is by far its women's division.  It hasn't been entirely their fault. Injuries kept Britt Baker and Kris Statlander out of the ring for a long time, while COVID-19 had kept women like Yuka Sakazaki and (until recently) Riho & Shanna out of the country entirely. Along with that, Kylie Rae seemed set to be one of the faces of the division before h...

TNA's One Night Only events have always confused me. The idea of taping a pay-per-view to air later doesn't make a lot of sense to me, especially when you're doing it months in advance. Also, having a bunch of matches with no build and zero stakes is just about as unenticing to spend money on as it gets. This was sort of corrected by doing a live One Night Only show once a year, but the lackluster matches were still present. All but three of the nine matches on the 2016 edition's card received a star or less from Dave Meltzer, with the worst-rated of them being an 8-Knockout Gauntlet match with a Knockouts Championship match on the line. If you've never seen a TNA gauntlet match, it's not like WWE's version. It's kind of like a Royal Rumble, only the final two have a singles match instead of trying to throw eachother over to the top rope. So with that out of the way, let's get into this. Entrant #1 is Madison Rayne of the Beautiful People, who m...

I did say I was coming back to this. Long time readers of the Wrestling Section will hopefully remember the Worst in the World , my first really series where I went through 99 of the worst matches in wrestling history and ranked them one by one. I wrapped up that series in October but always had the intention of coming back to it, since there are always going to be terrible matches in the future. And with the Wrestling Observer releasing their yearly awards, I thought it was the perfect time to look at the match that won the worst match of 2016. So here it is; Rebel vs Shelly Martinez from Knockouts Knockdown. So let me explain what Knockouts Knockdown is first. It was one of TNA's dumb One Night Only shows that they tape before they air and nothing important happens on them. Sometimes they give someone a meaningless prize, but that's not really anything. This show has 8 TNA Knockouts facing off against 8 other female wrestlers for spots in a battle royal, where the winn...