Joseph and Colette Discuss 1 Called Manders vs. Mad Dog Connelly

BRAWLS. STAR RATINGS. THE WAY THE INDIES USED TO BE. IT'S ALL HERE.

BIG EGG is nearly one! Joseph and I have our most daunting/foolish month of reviews ahead yet. We want to tell you about it, but we also want to hit 1000 followers. There are 876 of you reading BIG EGG already — why not tell your friends about us? Seriously, a tweet, skeet, thread, or mention on your various Discords/Subreddits would mean a whole lot to us, as your continued readership already does! Thank you for being here! Thank you for helping spread the word! Let’s get pumped about our birthday!

This week, we resumed our look back at the first half of 2023, with a hot brawl between 1 Called Manders and Mad Dog Connelly from St. Louis Anarchy wrestling. You can watch this one in the eternally blessed span of 10 minutes. Get on it, if you have not already.

Joseph: Mad Dog Connelly and 1 Called Manders Get Rough
Colette: 1 Called Manders and Mad Dog Connelly Warm My Heart a Little

Next Up: We're covering a surprise main event from ACTION Wrestling's anniversary main event! It's a clash of two of the most technically sound professional wrestlers on the independents as Adam Priest defends the ACTION Title against the "Wrestling Genius" Daniel Makabe!

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Joseph Montecillo
A few interesting things to talk about with this Manders/Mad Dog match but the first thing I'd like to lead with is that after a year of bitching and moaning about it on every public platform that I have, ultimate victory has finally been achieved. That's right, Mad Dog Connelly, one of the best talents on the American independents today, finally has a Cagematch profile. We did it, gamers.

Colette Arrand
Damn, on the same day I drop a star rating on BIG EGG.

Joseph Montecillo
Which is the second thing I wanted to talk about! What made you choose to do that on this go around?

Colette Arrand
I have been toying with the idea of doing star ratings for awhile, actually. Roger Ebert assigned star ratings — am I too good for them?

In seriousness, I’ve been toying with doing them for awhile, especially since Meltzer has made his functionally useless, which has made it so that when other wrestling critics who are stingier than him to begin with drop a legitimate five stars, other people notice and recognize what it means and talk about it a little. You had that happen a little with Abe vs. Nomura, and if it stays five stars you’ll likely get more of that when your EOTY video goes up. I really liked that and find it charming, essentially the way criticism when put qualitatively is meant to work. So why not?

With regard to this specific match, it just happened. I typed my last sentence, hit enter, then typed the rating. I laid out what I liked and didn’t like and my brain was like “four stars.” Which sounds like it’s how that sort of thing works, but it’s not. Sometimes you find yourself really taking off when you write about something but here everything added up and made sense. Really enjoyed my time, want to see more from both guys, four stars.