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Hey everyone So.............I will have a ton more notes. But I wanted to announce that DEAN~!!! will be released on DVD/Blu Ray through Smart Mark Video. We are working on it now, and the cover art is absolutely incredible. I have tons more thoughts and pictures to share, I'm still humbled by it all Anyone who does pick up IWTV, just a reminder for promo code "ACTION" Appreciate you tons. I think Dean Rasmussen would've given this show 5 BILLIONSTARSSSSS~!!!!!!!

it's been like 15 years since I posted on this board OR went to a wrestling show (that's what moving to a tiny island in the Pacific Ocean will do to you) but you know, everything is cyclical so let's do a Big Post on ACTION DEAN~! Right off the bat explaining to my wife what I needed to fly to the East Coast to do was a little complicated but I just bought the ticket first and let the rest work itself out. We've been in pretty severe crisis mode for the last few years (like... everybody else on Earth) and my whole resolution for 2-0-2-4 was to pull out of the nosedive and be a Human Man, with Human Interests once more. So we used some miles and I hooked up a place to stay with an old friend in NYC and made it a reality. I took the train from NYC to Philly and then a bus and then another bus to the closest hotel to the venue (the Plum Tree Inn), a place so sketchy my bank automatically pinged a fraud alarm the instant I checked in. After taking a shower I walked the 3 miles to the H20 Wrestling Center, located like all good things in the middle of a mixed use office park. It actually turned out to be a little bit longer because I was listening to a podcast my wife sent me to help her with a job interview so I missed the turn but after walking through a charming suburban neighborhood where it doesn't appear that people just walk through I found first the Wawa and then the venue. As I walked up all the workers were around the front side of the building and I overheard somebody say "big clothesline WHOOSH" before I found the real door. Nobody like checked my ticket or anything but you know how it goes. I have not been Deep Into wrestling for some time so a lot of these guys I have barely seen in passing or at all but I did not Complain on the Internet or even Do My Own Research about it. Colby Corino becomes the first challenger for a title I've ever seen warn the crowd that he's very tired, and justifiably so! Both him and Alex Kane have huge and very different charisma and this was definitely fun, the right amount of length and shenanigans without burning anything out. This show was LONG but for the most part the pacing was very smart (we'll get to the Most Part later). The Good Hand get the "early NWO heel stable" combination of a good talker, a laconic big man and a little fucking asshole piece of shit that everybody wants to see die rolling early and their match with Amboss / O'Shea Edwards was fun, especially because Kevin Ryan is a very good little fucking asshole piece of shit that everybody wants to see die. Suge D's failed armdrag bit with the enormous Edwards was also very charming and the moonsault at the end was a Big Fella Flying. Ugly Sucklings vs. Violence Is Forever was a quick little sprint packed with grisly offense from both sides. I liked the pace of this a lot and everything looked good. Here's White Mike taking a little breather in the empty chair next to me, a chair that would get a significant amount of use throughout the evening. https://shortandhappy.com/images/dean-mike.jpg The first appearance of the Nasty Ring Mat heralded the crowd popping for Gypsy Joe Rules despite having no idea what they were. Tom Lawlor coming into the match dressed like he just finished up his shift at Best Buy was the little touch of surrealism that made this magical. A lot of it happened outside the ring on the other side from where I was sitting but watching Tank blade was hilarious, he worked his forehead with the frenetic zeal of a squirrel trying to open a Brazil nut. 3 Flippy Guys vs. 3 Strong Motherfuckers was exactly what it said on the tin. Danny Demanto's plaintive request for a single door was deeply touching, and then he set the door up against the ropes right in front of me so I figured I just wouldn't see anything. Then somebody got flung into it and a tuft of his hair was sticking out of the door the entire match, which was pretty gross. Most of this match was Bobby Flaco just getting the living shit kicked out of him. "Unkillable" Brayden Toon is the weirdest wrestling name I've heard in a while. Is he a living cartoon? Is his signature match a scaffold match over a vat of Dip? https://shortandhappy.com/images/dean-flaco.jpg I liked the work in Gringo Loco vs. Dr. Cerebro a lot but the actual match was a little off-feeling, with the inexplicable DQ for a chairshot on the arm? followed by a match restart and the chair just lying there? Everything they did looked great though and it was fun as fuck and Cerebro has Veteran Presence. https://shortandhappy.com/images/dean-cerebro.jpg Krule and Warhorse worked hard but this match was incredibly long-feeling. Krule's Hello Kitty lighter fell out of his pocket onto the mat right in front of me like three minutes into the thing. Mr. Horse has a lovely top rope elbow and they did a lot of careening into chairs but there was also Jumping Nothings into Goozles and other unsatisfactory things. I could have used five minutes less on this. Put that five minutes into Makowski vs Arez which was billed as a clash of styles but everything these guys did looked perfect, smooth and hard-hitting and great. Arez's toe-tap moonsault off the ropes is devastatingly beautiful. This seemed like it was just shifting into another gear when it ended but I definitely wanted more. Adam Priest is a guy I've been hearing a lot of praise for and while "Any Style" is a completely doofus nickname he really came out and delivered the most Professional Wrestling match of the night, talking multitudes of shit towards the recently unemployed Slim J throughout the match and making everything he did look great. This was worked precisely like it should be, nothing out of place and nothing unnecessary, just two great performers locking in on it. The rope neck snap to get out of the sleeper was disgusting even if I could barely see it. So gross! I wasn't as into Sinner & Saint vs. Youth and Mathers as some others seem to be. I started to drift out of wrestling as that super indie style was coming to prominence, and by this point I'd seen so many Guys doing so much Stuff that a match like this, which was full of Guys and Stuff, was gilding the proverbial lily. Nothing essentially wrong with this and it all looked good, just not for me. These guys are all babies so hopefully they'll grow into being a little bit lazier, like a man does. https://shortandhappy.com/images/dean-sinner.jpg What can you even say anymore about Demus vs. Mad Dog Connelly? Demus is a foulmouthed short king but the instant Connelly stepped out and started whipping that chain around this felt DANGEROUS in a "somebody in the crowd is going to lose a tooth" way. These guys just wailed the shit out of each other in a ton of intense and great-looking ways. I got the same garbage can thrown at me twice, and it was most certainly full of garbage. This match was the kind of thing that's impossible to explain to somebody who doesn't already Get It, but if you Get It than the Getting's Good. https://shortandhappy.com/images/dean-demus.jpg Main event was incredible. Being able to watch these two guys work each other over from the front row, see the struggle and shift and work, was truly special. Both Makabe and Thatcher are masters of this kind of close work, and everything here felt earned and tense and logical, right down to the three nasty punches they closed with. When my daughter was looking through my photos she stopped at this one and said "that looks like it REALLY hurts." That's how you know you're doing it right. https://shortandhappy.com/images/dean-makabe.jpg But most importantly? At one point during the match, quietly under-the-breath whispered from Thatcher to Makabe, "you OK?" just long enough to connect and affirm the trust and closeness necessary to work this violently with each other. Not intentional, not meant to be heard, but living proof that pro wrestling is love is pro wrestling is love. My most cherished memory of DEAN~ is when I met him and a bunch of the other guys for the first time at the 2000 ECWA Super 8 (aka "The One Before The Good One"). I had made my way to Wilmington, Delaware in the way I did in my 20s, ramshackle and improvised, and when the show let out Dean asked me where I was staying and I just pointed off into the woods, an act which he'd bring up to me several times in the next decade or so. RIP big man, you made this Internet a place for me to share something special and learn from the best. Might not post here for another 15 years, but who knows? Lot of stuff on this board doesn't seem to be working if you want me to look at the code.

“Aside from my actions, what have I done to deserve this?” - Stokely Hathaway, 2024.

I thought Samantha Irvin was fucking great.

My dude, they don't care. I'm not saying this to aim at you or anything, but there are people going "don't they know it's not a real sport?!", and it ignores the simple fact that they don't want LGBTQ folks (and ESPECIALLY trans folks) to be involved in any aspect of life whatsoever. Real sports, fake sports, teaching in schools, working in a job - literally any job - they don't care. I can go into dozens upon dozens of explanations as to why the physiological arguments don't line up and they'll just go "hurr durr durr chromosomes" or "hurr durr durr protect women" because they don't care about any of it. It's buzz word salad because they want us gone. And it doesn't stop at Nyla Rose. Booking another trans person against Nyla and going "ha! Take that!" doesn't solve the problem because that's one of their weasel arguments; that trans people should just compete against each other, knowing full well there aren't enough of us in most situations to do that. The fact that there actually are enough trans wrestlers do to that means the goalposts will then move, and it'll just become WELL THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!! I have a friend who's a librarian, who spoke out about the protests against drag queen story hours. Someone said "why not get a cop or fire fighter to read to the kids" and she said "I tried, they don't show up, drag queens do", and guess what... they would rather have literally nobody read to a kid than a drag queen read to a kid because heaven forbid people have to have a conversation with their child that might make the parent mildly uncomfortable, like being a parent doesn't involve being mildly uncomfortable 95% of the time. Anyway, to make this about wrestling because I'm breaking all kinds of board rules, the Oklahoma State Athletic Commission can go suck a fuck and people should go about their business. If they want to fine AEW for putting a trans wrestler on the show, TK should pay it. And I got news for him, they'll start fining you for having gay wrestlers next because that's the slope we're heading down unless you put a stop to it like right the fuck now.

I’m so straight, my house is filled with tough straight stuff like leather and pictures of buff bikers.

Our friend Dylan Hales tweeted the cover art:

8 days removed and it feels surreal to me that all this happened. A show that was in some way run by and mainly for a bunch of folks on a message board and it just happened to have some really fucking incredible stuff going on. Like I've been trying to comment on this throughout the week and stopped because it was hard to wrap my head around it all. Yet when watching it back I realize two things. One, my fat ass was on the screen way more than I intended (I thought chilling in the corner would get me out of hard cam view) and two it did happen and it was fucking awesome. I can't say enough how great it was to finally meet @Rev Ray, @Pete, @Phil Schneiderand @Johnny Sorrowto thank them for all the years of awesomeness. And it was great to meet @S.K.o.S.and @Danwho was near me the whole time yet I didn't know until he mentioned in the Discord chat. I was a bit shy for a bit and wish I met more people but I felt a comfort in knowing whoever was there was taking in a wild show and it was for Dean. I also experienced a first in that for the first time ever a hardcore tag match got me oddly emotional. But when Tank and Manders are battling on chairs in front of Dean's chair and the crowd chanting his name how the hell can you not be? As for the show itself I have seen a couple folks when watching random indy stuff but the only one I saw before this was Slim J. So it made me compare this to a concert. There's many a concert where I would go to let's say Metallica and you know what you're getting. But then there's random concerts that sound neat that all goes well end up fucking incredible. This was an instance of the latter for me and I became a fan that night of folks like Krule and of all teams the Ugly Sucklings. I definitely need to keep an eye out for them. And I sure as hell didn't expect Violence if Forever to show up but holy bats there they were so that's cool to say I finally saw them live. If I thought about this more maybe I could have tried a road report like I've been reading all these years. But I wouldn't do it justice so hopefully the truncated version of everything works. Anyway it was a fucking great time and I'll be looking forward to the DVD.

Honestly, I feel like that Omega/Mox exploding deathmatch ending was worse than making this Punk/Perry stuff an angle. This wasn't anywhere near as bad as Steph leading the crowd to celebrate her dad after he was kicked out the first time. I've seen decades of bad wrestling and comically bad angles, gimmicks and stories. This doesn't really compare. No one's career is over after this. And the more I think of it, I think short term this sucks for AEW, but may work out long term because the mystery is dead. They'll get dunked on for now because people were ready to dunk on them for doing it anyway. But now that we've seen it, it's not interesting. It doesn't make Punk look cool. Jack didn't shoulder check him walking into the back, like I recall one report claimed. It's a weird little scuffle that ends about as quick as it began. They took a bizarre story that captured people's imaginations, and turned it into nothing by showing them the reality. Now we all want to move on from it. And we will. After about 3-6 more months of Punk chants.

I can't believe that Mina Shirakawa made out with Mariah Mae in the center of the ring on Dynamite and everyone is talking about this bullshit. Priorities people!

Punk was not right to put his hands on Jack Perry. No matter how dumb this angle is, he's not right. The idea that he gets his name chanted for that shit bothers me more than Tony and the Bucks airing the footage.

Insane praise Tank has been wrestling for 25 years and has been going to shows since the 70s!!

It's been a year today. Not a day goes by where I don't miss the big guy and his presence. I don't watch a new match without wondering what his one line thought on it in a massive stream of consciousness paragraph would have been (though, I can imagine it at least because you learned to anticipate the patterns, which is its own sort of blessing). I should have my review of the Action show going up tonight on SC. I talked to my parents this morning. Took the 6 year old to swim lesson. Am reaching out to you guys now. Nothing is assured in this life. Go say hi to your loved ones today.

Look, I'm white, I'm not Counting Crows white.

Jesus Christ shut the fuck up.

I thought the footage and the whole angle, was handled about as well as they could if they were going to do it. They tried to position FTR as the adults in the room who are focused on making AEW awesome and not petty beefs between egos. Basically it's dumb that Punk did this and it's dumb that The bucks did this. But they probably would've been better off not doing any of it.

Man, whole lot of fun cops in this thread. Don't have fun in an unapproved way around here or else you're going to get busted by people who get distracted by rope colors.

Been thinking about DEAN on his one year anniversary today. Scary it's a year. I don't have the way with words. Just wanted to say I love and miss you, fella from Paul xxx.

God damn it.

I know we have a merchandise thread but this is too important: https://www.shopaew.com/catalog/product/view/id/74008/s/nyla-rose-her-all-royalties-will-go-to-freedom-oklahomas-501c3/category/5343/ New Nyla Rose shirt with all royalties going towards Freedom Oklahoma, a LGBTQ+ rights group. Well done AEW.

So the story of how Darby Allin came to be hit by a bus came out. He saw Raymond Pettibon about to be hit by a bus, and ran in and and took the hit for him. https://vxtwitter.com/DrainBamager/status/1785338829404016873 Yes, the Raymond Pettibon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Pettibon He who designed the Black Flag logo, amongst lots of other things.

So I will only attend wrestling events if they are in one particular arena, because its close to my house, parking is easy, and I don't like going into DC. Well AEW is FINALLY running it in June for Dynamite so I get to go to my first AEW show, very excited.

There were two guys in that period of NXT that I thought had future star written all over them: Sullivan and Velveteen Dream. Boy do I know how to pick em.

In the last two weeks, we've had two accounts whose accounts have been hacked and posted spam. I'd highly recommend that if you read this, you change your password to this board. Especially if it's a password you've shared with another site. Alright, back to posting:

Riley Gaines is such a hateful pathetic grifter who wasn’t even close the best woman on her team. Fuck her and the career she’s making out of being a hateful piece of shit. I deal with enough of this trans panic crap daily I don’t need it coming into my fake figuring and yet here we are (Note for those who don’t know: I’m trans af)

I've had enough of the weirdo online posters. I've basically unsubscribed from all the FB wrestling groups I had joined. The DVDVR is the only group of online wrestling weirdos I need.

Here's the Andretti image. I captured it myself, dammit.

That's what the DVDVR has always advocated for: Good punches.

If you're a social media star and Logan Paul invites you to a WWE event, just say no.

For the love of God someone please throw all of Tony Khan's phones in the river

Not for nothing nor to deny seriousness of these or the allegations against Gulak, the idea of Shawn Michaels chewing someone out for not being professional tickles me greatly. "Back in my day you didn't take advantage of your opponent in the ring, you might stomp on him and curse him out or maybe make an overt reference on live TV to them cheating on their wife, or you just showed up to work high and/or drunk..."

For a second I was like, Damn, Drake pissed Rikishi off, too?!

Whatever. That kicked ass. NFL network loved it, apparently. Fuck wwe. They harbored a sex trafficker for years. At least one. Triple H can find a spoon and eat my ass. I hope TK says that every day from now til eternity…

There's also some value in just letting some stuff go too, and not constantly holding onto a misdeed from the past. Take the woman in my avatar, for example! She played Michfest (a music festival with a significant bend towards TERFness) a few times, and in spite of repeated statements in support of the trans community since then, she still gets called a TERF. And like... People can change? People can have different opinions than what they used to have? Do we have to crystalize everyone to what they used to be years and years ago? I was a pretty awful person ten years ago, I hope to heck I've changed since then. So if I give myself that grace, why wouldn't I give someone else that same grace? If someone's still a deliberately awful bigot now, okay, fine, I get it. But if we're taking people to task for something they did in like 2011, I dunno. Maybe tap the brakes some.

Oklahoma is a fucking joke. Fuck their governor. Keep fucking censuring lawmakers and give half hearted “it’s a tragedy” statements to fucking teens that die that don’t share your lifestyles, you dishonest whores of Babylon

That's a different RF brother

You'll get the same strawman arguments when these knuckleheads argue about "protecting women's sports", like they aren't mocking that nobody cares about women's sports or shuffling money around to only give scholarships to football and men's basketball programs. Pablo Torre did an episode of his podcast to interview the single varsity sports player in the entire state of Ohio. For all the ignorant bleating about the subject and its supposed epidemic status, there is literally one trans girl playing in the entire state. She is the backup catcher on the softball team. She just wants to play with her friends. Imagine that. THE HORROR!!! Here's the episode: https://youtu.be/nJc4hxxdCJ8?si=OLne9uJDChk6TvDE How dare us terrible transes try to be part of society.

Ladies and gentlemen, wrestling is back

If anyone has me on ignore go fuck yourself

you’re in a lot of trouble, buddy

Here's my write up of the show: http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2024/05/dean.html

Holy shit I just realized that Roderick Strong is that goofy math teacher looking dude in the hardcore band that if he’s there means you’re going to die in the pit

It's almost like, when you get right down to it, it's all just bullshit.

I will leave it at this since Paul's response is strange anyway you slice it: My whole belief is Paul is just pissed he lost out on these two guys who he thought it would be obvious they would be swayed to sign with WWE. They have all the perceived momentum, and they were able to bring a bunch of people into the fold since Vince left, came back, and then left again. He felt he needed to come up with an excuse to why he lost out on two major free agents to a lower tier company. IMO it's like a fanbase of a sports franchise who reads the rumor mill all offseason they're going to land some big name free agent, negotiations break off, and then another team signs them away out of nowhere. Then that same fanbase that was excited about these game changing players all of a sudden didn't want those guys in the first place. I would have been really impressed if Paul just said, "Sucks we didn't get them. Hope that works out for them, but we feel would have been the better landing spot and provide better opportunities. We feel our roster is still stacked with or without them. Best of luck." No shade necessary and you can still big up WWE.

Also, how great is Samantha Irvin? OMG.