This is the most important/universally loved WWE PPV in quite some time. It might be the most significant WWE non-WrestleMania PPV ever. Let’s just get to the feedback from Team FGB.

Alan
Thumbs Up
Best Match: CM Punk vs. John Cena
Worst Match: Brie Bella vs. Kelly Kelly

Thumbs Up to high heavens! Punk vs. Cena was slowly built, but the crazy atmosphere carried it during the early going. Then when things kicked into high gear they were off to the races and everything was perfect with regard to the finish and the end of the show. Logical, smart and creative. This was Canadian Stampede in 2011. Same month, a “B” show, main event revolving around a hometown conquering hero, insane atmospshere and a great undercard. They hit this out of the park.

Duan
Thumbs Up
Best Match: CM Punk vs. John Cena
Worst Match: Brie Bella vs. Kelly Kelly

They got it right!

A great night’s wrestling top to bottom. Both the Ladder matches were tremendous fun. Smackdown had the better of the two which surprised me. The Raw one was a real mess at times but was still had some fantastic moments. Henry/Show was perfectly fine and Henry came out of it looking like a beast. The Orton vs. Christian match was good. I wasn’t too keen on the title change by DQ – I’m just old school like that – but what I did enjoy was the almighty beating Randy dished out afterward. Arguably the best beat down since he laid waste to Legacy many months back.

The main event took a while to settle, but it came good in the end. The final few minutes were as dramatic as anything I have seen in WWE. I loved that they teased two of the more predictable outcomes (Montreal, Alberto cash in) before going with the right finish. It just added that little bit extra to the match.

This is a huge shot in the arm for WWE. They have a ton of momentum going into TV. Hopefully it can carry them through the rest of the summer.

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UFC 132 promised to be an exciting card. But also, with the UFC’s smallest division headlining the card, there was a chance that not too many people were going to watch it. And that’s too bad because it lived it to its billing. UFC 132 is probably in the top 10 of all-time UFC shows in my book.

Here’s what the FGB crew said about UFC 132.

Alan
Thumbs Up
Best Fight: Urijah Faber vs. Dominick Cruz
Worst Fight: None

A great night of knockouts capped off by a top class main event. You had great moments like Leben and Silva trading, Tito’s celebration and Condit’s knee of death and nothing close to bad.

Cadillac Don
Thumbs Up
Best Fight: Urijah Faber vs. Dominick Cruz
Worst Fight: None

There were a lot of great moments on this card, including the Tito Ortiz shocking win (and classic celebration), and the blood bath between Siver and Wiman. Most people seemed surprised Siver won (myself included, but he did finish strong… even though he does look about 70) but the fight could have gone either way.

Coming in late to the UFC scene, I had never seen Tito Ortiz fight, or Wanderlei Silva. However, the fellows watching with me kept talking about how scary Silva was in his prime.

This is one of the big differences between professional wrestling and mixed martial arts. In wrestling you still see men selling for guys like Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair. In MMA, those two would have been forced to retire, instead of having a choice.

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It was a short turnaround for UFC 131, after a putrid UFC 130. The show was much better, though still, unspectacular at times. Even the heavyweight fight, which was nearly promised to be great, was just an alright tactical battle between one guy who didn’t want to risk getting upset, and another guy who was simply not in the same class on the feet. What should’ve been a great styles clash was in fact, a pretty boring one.

Duan and I give you our thoughts about UFC 131.

Duan
Thumbs In the Middle
Best Fight: Shane Carwin vs. Junior Dos Santos
Worst Fight: Diego Nunes vs. Kenny Florian

After a disappointing run of shows, there was a sense that UFC really needed a good PPV outing this month. While 131 was by no means perfect, it did go a long way towards stopping the rot. While there was no real blow away fights or stand out performances, the action was solid throughout, and I think for the most fans will feel they got their money’s worth.

This card also acted as a reminder why the move towards five round main events is not necessarily for the better. Dos Santos vs. Carwin, despite being wildly uncompetitive and quite one paced, came off like a really big deal. I have a feeling that had it gone another two rounds, people would have lost patience and turned on these guys. If that happened, how would it effect demand for a Velasquez/Dos Santos title fight? It’s something to consider.

GG
Thumbs In The Middle
Best Fight: Demian Maia vs. Mark Munoz
Worst Fight: Diego Nunes vs. Kenny Florian

Sam Stout gave us a vicious knockout. Dave Herman and Jon Olav Einemo gave us a rock ‘em/sock ‘em kind of fight. And Mark Munoz and Demian Maia gave us a fun, strategic battle. Even though all of those things happened, the show still felt a bit anticlimactic because of the main event. I think most of us figured that Junior Dos Santos was going to beat Shane Carwin, but I think we predicted it to be more of a war than it was. JDS fought safe fight and Carwin just couldn’t do anything. Had that fight ended in the TKO we all hoped for, I think we see this show differently.

I was at UFC 130 live, so I had the live perspective. Some of my FGB brothers watched it on PPV and they have their perspective. While our perspectives were different, our apathy toward the event was the same. This was not a good show.

The FGB crew gives you their thoughts about UFC 130.

Alan
Thumbs Down (deep in the surface of the earth)
Best Fight: Brian Stann vs. Jorge Santiago
Worst Fight: Frank Mir vs. Roy Nelson

The show was a complete waste of my Sunday morning. Not a single thing coming out of this excites me. Quinton Jackson has got to be one of the most boring entities in MMA right now. He just has these crap fights, never finishes anyone and looks completely disinterested about everything. If the damn fighter isn’t interested in what he’s doing, why would the viewer be? Mir/Nelson was terrible and nothing on the undercard lit my world on fire. Credit to Brian Stann for being to only guy to show anything on this show. Actually, Travis Browne as well in fairness (I was just pissed by the that because I bet on
Struve).

Cactus Jim
Thumbs Down
Best Fight: Stefan Struve vs. Travis Browne
Worst Fight: Frank Mir vs. Roy Nelson
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It was quite the tale of two shows last weekend. On one hand, you had UFC 129, which broke the UFC attendance record headlined by one of their biggest stars, George St. Pierre, fighting in Toronto. On the other hand, you had a show that the world generally forgot about with WWE Extreme Rules. That usually happens the month after WrestleMania.

However, the forgotten show seemed to be at least even with the huge UFC show, even if there wasn’t much hype to it.

The FGB crew gives you their thoughts about both shows below.

UFC 129

Alan
Thumbs Up
Best Fight: Mark Hominick vs. Jose Aldo
Worst Fight: Jake Shields vs. Georges St. Pierre

Fun show to watch. Lots of drama, cool atmosphere and on pace to be one of their best shows before the disappointing main event.

Cactus Jim
Thumbs Up
Best Fight: Mark Hominick vs. Jose Aldo
Worst Fight: Jake Shields vs. Georges St. Pierre
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WrestleMania 27 has come and gone and there are mixed emotions. There was a good and bad things about the show, but because of all the hype concerning the show, I think most of us were a bit let down when it was all said and done. Big D is back to give us his thoughts, and since he has many, we’ll let him hit clean up.

Here’s what we thought of the WrestleMania 27:

Duan
Thumbs In The Middle
Best Match: HHH vs. The Undertaker
Worst Match: John Cena vs. The Miz

A couple of weeks ago, I spoke with GG about how Wrestlemania 25 was the only time I was ever disappointed with a Wrestlemania. Sure there have been worse cards in the past (much worse in fact), but this was a show which could have been great, but WWE blew it. I now view 27 in much the same light.

They got the match ordering spectacularly wrong again. Winning The Royal Rumble now earns you the prestigious honour of being beaten and humiliated in the opener. Months of building Del Rio as the next big star went out the window. And why? To protect Edge who isn’t even over in the first place. Their use of time was appalling. My God, they wasted a lot of time on this show. Eleven months of the year they cope just fine with three hours on PPV. You give them an extra hour and suddenly there’s no time for anything. How does that even happen? Danielson’s match was cut entirely. Two others only went a matter of seconds. Why would you even bother having the eight man tag if it’s only going to last a minute? It served no purpose other than burying The Corre. On the other hand, Lawler/Cole got way too much time. The beating Cole got really didn’t live up to the build, and reversing the decision just furthered soured me on the match.

The Rock’s involvement throughout the night was worse than useless. If you are considering arguing this point, JUST STOP. You are wrong. People give Cena flak for being cheesy. Rock’s stuff in the last couple of weeks (and particularly on this show) was nothing short of embarrassing. His opening speech was excruciating, the backstage vignettes, worthless.

It wasn’t all bad though. Cody vs. Rey had its moments, and Orton/Punk was actually a really good old school wrestling match. But when the pressure was on it was the two old men who stood up and were counted. HHH and Undertaker gave us one of the all time great Mania matches. For my money, this was HHH’s best ever performance. Whether it topped either of Taker’s matches with Shawn is really irrelevant at this point. It saved the show from being a total disaster.

I thought beforehand that Cena and Miz would be fine closing out the PPV. Boy, was I wrong. It fell flat, the booking was horrendous, and it just wasn’t any good anyway. To have this match finish the biggest show of the year can only be considered a colossal disappointment. Other than the Taker/HHH classic, this is not a show I ever want to relive.

Alan
Thumbs In The Middle
Best Match: HHH vs. The Undertaker
Worst Match: Michael Cole vs. Jerry Lawler
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