Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Fave Five 5/11/15-5/17/15

1) The New Day: As usual with Pay-Per-View weeks, this list is put up a few days late. With such a busy week, you may be surprised to see the New Day top the list. I can't understate how good New Day has been in recent weeks. For the second straight PPV, they stole the show. They won the Two out of Three Falls match to retain the gold, while still making sure Tyson Kidd and Cesaro looked great. They all play their roles perfectly and are entertaining as hell to watch. As much as I love Kidd and Cesaro, there is no better choice to carry the straps right now. Hell, even their post match interview with the champagne flutes filled with milk was gold. New Day is untouchable right now as an act.

2) Shinsuke Nakamura: During the big ROH/NJPW crossover, one man shined brightest. It was the former IWGP Intercontinental Champion Shinsuke Nakamura. The man only went out and swept his matches. First, he teamed with Okada to defeat the Briscoe Brothers, which is a big win by itself. Next, he topped Mark Briscoe, Jay Lethal and Jushin Thunder Liger in a Four Corner Survival match. To cap things off, he went out and defeated ACH. Those are all big wins in general, but to do it in such a short span with no losses is impressive as hell. Since I've started getting into NJPW, nobody has impressed me more than Nakamura and that continued this week.


3) Seth Rollins: Along with the Tag Team Title match, the WWE Title match at Payback was the best thing about the show. Despite the copious amounts of interference, we saw a great match. Everybody did their part but Seth Rollins gets the nod here. I was tempted to cheat and put all three Shield members here for their Triple Powerbomb and the faceoff between Dean Ambrose and Roman Reigns but I decided against it. I will say that I got some early 2000's Triple H/Austin/Rock vibes from the three of them during the match. Seth even ended the match with a Pedigree. A great way to end a relatively good Pay-Per-View.

            4) The Young Bucks: I've mentioned before that I'm not the biggest Young Bucks fan. They are good though and always find a way on here because they're successful. Of all of the NJPW/ROH shows this week, the Bucks got what may have been the biggest victory when they beat the Addiction and the Kingdom. Not only did the IWGP Jr. Tag Team Champions beat the ROH Tag Team Champions, but they also went over the IWGP Tag Team Champions. As far as I've seen, the Jr.'s and heavyweight divisions are pretty separate in New Japan, so them agreeing to have the Jr. Champs go over the heavyweight Champions is kind of a big deal.


5) Neville: During the week, Neville managed to do some good things. First, he stole the show on Raw against John Cena in the best Open Challenge so far. Not only was the match great but Neville was actually booked to look like he'd capture the title. He hit the Red Arrow only for Rusev to run in and cause the disqualification. So even though it was by DQ, he did beat John Cena. Then, he went onto Payback and picked up another win, though it was via countout. Granted a DQ and countout win wouldn't normally put you on the list, but considering the way he looked in the first match and that the second win puts him in line for the IC Title Elimination Chamber, this was a good week for the "New Sensation".