Leaderboard

CM Punk needs a healthy dose of Givensism

Life is confusing and complicated, but there are a few certainties, among them that anyone who brags about their “brutal honesty” is just a selfish asshole who cares more about indulging their own id than treating other people decently. Also, that anyone who calls themselves a jerk, is.

Just got home from the show, some thoughts from being there live: -Shota is gonna be great. I'm sure this is a thing with the young boys, who wouldn't dare "go through the motions," but his fundamentals are so good. His lockups, the way he hits the ropes, and he's got some good fire. Crowd was definitely into him, and I fully bit on that 2.9 he got on Sho. -I want to like Zack Sabre, I really do. He's just such a GEEK. He's the epitome of a guy playing at being a wrestler. The first time I saw him was in the CWC, and I was excited to finally check him out, and I came away thinking, "Him?" 2 years later, despite the push and having TAKA doing this amazing intro, he still does nothing for me. -Amazed that they did literally nothing for almost 10 minutes in that 6-man and had the crowd in the palms of their hands. The only negative was that the GOD managed to beat down 6 guys. Yuck. -Elgin/Makabe: Makabe can still deliver. I'm not necessarily the biggest Elgin fan, and it seems Gedo has cooled off on him, but he was fine tonight. Like sevendaughters said, I was just waiting for them to start throwing bombs, and they had some nice ones. -Yoshi/Page: Yoshi-Hashi is--a guy. Out of the seemingly infinite members of Chaos, he's easily the least interesting, and desperately needs a refresh. I really don't see what him going over Page does for anyone. As for Page, this was my first time seeing him live. The first few times I saw him, I wrote him off as a black hole of charisma. Recently, I stumbled upon the footage of Bullet Club invading Bar Wrestling, and as hokey as all the Joey Ryan stuff is, I remember thinking of Matt Striker/Stryker and wondering if there were two DIFFERENT wrestlers named Adam Page. Just night and day from everything I saw before that. This got me to start watching BTE, and I've been enjoying him showing some personality on there. I think the tricky thing about trying to judge the WWE viability of gaijin wrestlers in NJPW is the fact that they don't have that many opportunities to have singles matches, or to cut promos. He's definitely delivered in his first G1. There was a short segment tonight, where he had Yoshi down and was sort of kicking/toying with him, but live it came off more like he didn't know what to do, and they definitely lost the crowd for a moment. So--he's still putting it together, but I think in another 2-3 years, he'll be a better version of Seth Rollins. -Suzuki/Fale: They lost me here. What's the point of having a faction, when you're facing a group whom you KNOW is going to cheat, and your other 2 boys who already had their match earlier in the night don't run out to prevent a 3 on 2 beatdown? Ridiculous. -Evil/White: Both guys continue to grow on me, and this was cool up until the end. Evil came off like a dope when he got the chair from Jay and teased using it. Yeah, he was mathematically eliminated, but he was playing spoiler to Jay. Why would he risk getting DQed? -Main event was a good one. This was my second time seeing these two face off live (first was Wrestle Kingdom 9). The crowd was nearly unanimously in support of Tanahashi. I feel like Gedo must be in denial, which is why he wasn't at ringside. The story I took from it worked, though--Tana only needed a draw to win the block, but the Ace doesn't go for a draw. He aggressively pursued a win--Okada coming out and sort of big-timing Tana, combined with the 30-minute time limit, made this a real uphill battle for him. I think this was the best way to get Tana to the finals without hurting Okada. Side note--Red Shoes is HORRENDOUS. I was having flashbacks to early ROH Sean Hanson. He's not as bad on TV, where he's not in every shot. But when you're there live--there were times in the match where it was impossible to follow the action because he was just so distracting. I don't understand how he's still a thing. For those who enjoy looking at ticket sales: I bought tickets for tonight's and tomorrow night's shows just this past Monday. I was able to get A block seats in the 7th row of the 100 level, just to the side of the hard cam--terrific seats. For B block, I was only able to get 200 level standing room tickets. Sunday show was completely sold out. Saturday seems like it will be as well. Tonight, though--the floor was full (although they could have easily put down another 3-5 rows of chairs on all each of the 4 sides), but there were 3-4 entire sections upstairs that were 100% empty. Also, the last 4-5 rows of EVERY 100 and 200 section were empty. Nowhere near a sellout tonight. Granted, it would have looked better in Kokugikan, where there are 3,000+ fewer seats. But I'm not sure how much the difference has to do with Friday vs Saturday, or the weak A block vs the stronger B block. Just something to chew on.

Might as well share this in here, but this is a work in progress. My cousin is turning 40 and is a huge Bills fan. I'm making a magnetic bottle opener for him. A took some red oak, cut it to size, mitered the corners, took my router and a roundover but to round the edges, and wood burned the Bills logo at the bottle of the board. I'll be installing a bar style bottle opener at the top and I'm going to embed a magnet on the reverse side. When you crack open a bottle, the cap will catch onto the front because of the magnet on the back.

Look in my eyes, what do you see? The court fees that you owe to me. Yeah that's all I got.

"OH MANOTH! THOU OF PRAMAL DARKNESS DADDEH!"

"Hey Phil?" "What's up?" "Um... why is my name on the bill?"

“God DAMN IT, pal! If they’re selling out MSG, we’ll sell out MCG!”

I was kinda hoping for Jay White related fuckery in the main, before it started, but don't regret the lack of Maximum Bonkers when Tanahashi and Okada do that. They're great, can't be anything less, and the crowd... the swelling shrieks and cascading stomps was borderline orchestral. I love how much certain crowds love Tanahashi; it's impossible to resist getting wrapped up in it (not that I try). Every bit a main event worthy of the building. And I love that Okada isn't all the way back, that Tana actually had him beat--maybe, probably. Credit to the English announce crew, also, for hitting the right story beats throughout. Charlton noting Tana's neck control(?) as being reminiscent of the famous wrist control moment was especially nice. So, where to now? I think Tana advancing essentially eliminates Naito. I could absolutely see Ibushi getting his moment of absolute ascendance, beating the god his finisher names for the G1; and I could also see Kenny getting that win after a draw with Ibushi. He won't beat Okada's record reign, but he can do something the Rainmaker never did, and win the G1 while champion. Anyway, Page and Yoshi delivered on what I hoped, and Ibushi and Omega actually did not fight. Crucially, Kota looked more than a little annoyed at having to deal with this bullshit again. It ain't happening, but Kota going Black Tights and turning Kenny's own gun against him would feel earned.

You’ve got it all wrong, man. Hannity is a clean cut babyface in that territory.

I hate seeing money come between people. Money tore my closest family members apart. It's a long story, but about a month ago, my aunt (mom's sister and yia yia's oldest daughter) passed away at the age of 66. My aunt and her daughter stopped speaking to us, so we didn't even know she was sick for the past two years, lost the ability to speak, and died on hospice care, so we never got the chance to make peace. My 90 year old grandmother has outlived her husband and two of her three children. The point of my story, make amends even if it means swallowing your pride and admitting guilt because none of us know when our time is up. Don't take ill feelings to the grave, especially over money.

You're just a like a Phil, instead of making me whole again, you send me a bill. I've also got ''Iiiiiii'm CM Punk, so you better get the lawsuit started'

Also, which bridges did Corny burn, exactly? ROH? He's on good enough terms with WWE to appear on their Network content. I know people don't like Corny because he said a bad thing about Kenny Omega or whatever, but I'm not seeing any comparison here.

Y'all are ruining my jokes with facts.

Looks like they are officially sold out, eight months out, without a single match announced. Unreal.

If the crowd sounded so massive while only filling roughly half the building, Omega/Ibushi is gonna be rapturous, and a final night with Tanahashi might threaten Kobashi's cancer comeback decibel levels.

I'll keep that autocorrect in.

I like Renee Young and no fucking Coachman!

Sleaze thread > Twitter There's a lot of comedy gold in the sleaze thread.

Yeah night 2 of this year's myc smokes last year's. I've seen a couple meiko satomura matches before but after the past two days, I want to see every match. She was the mvp of the tourney. The semi match was amazing and match of the tourney for sure. As for the Tegan thing, that was the saddest moment in wrestling I've seen in years. When she did the dive and got up and hit the steps, the whole crowd gasped cause we knew it was bad. I've never heard a crowd go silent like that. I hope she can come back. What awful luck.

Possible (and untestable) thing I find a bit funny: Perhaps more people would have come if they thought the outcome we got was possible. Maybe they just didn’t want to see Tanahashi lose to Okada again, and assumed that was the outcome. Whatever their respective drawing power, there’s no doubt who’s more beloved.

Yeah, the idea of NJPW running a largely separate U.S. offshoot always struck me as preposterous. So much of what people like about NJPW booking depends on them doing discrete tours, big annual tournaments, and shows filled out with relatively inconsequential tags (sometimes nothing BUT tags) so they don't burn through big matches. You can't replicate that system on a national basis in the U.S. So a hypothetical New Japan USA promotion would basically be NJPW-style wrestling, but with more American wrestlers and American-style booking, plus occasional appearances by the big New Japan stars. That already exists and it's called ROH.

The fact that they have turned this into a murder mystery might be the greatest thing they have ever done I am pretty positive this is all Jeremy Borash

Huh, the racist and sexist weirdo who shit in women's bags liked touching his dick in front of people and trying to get them to shake his dong-covered hand? Wow, I'm shocked that a dude from the arguable worst state in the country has the values of your typical sex offender. Just. Shocked.

Man, fuck all y'all.

Seeing that he got screwed over by his dad and his brother, it's no surprise that he would have trust issues. Seems like he'd rather be the dumper than the dumpee.

Punk uses people and throws them away, it's not that hard to see. He got what he needed from Kofi, et al, and when he left wrestling he didn't need them for anything.

I fell HARD for Dead Cells. Holy shit. Playing on Xbox and it stopped my progress on every other game I'm playing dead. I knew it got me when I found myself thinking about playing it when I was at work earlier. Like, gaming is my primary hobby, I guess, but I rarely find myself just chomping at the bit to get back to whatever it is I'm playing. That's always the sign of a good one for me. Feel like I might be handicapping myself by using trap builds (when the game is so kind as to allow me to do so), as I'm not improving my parrying with shields. But maybe I'll base the next build around ice bows. Or shit, this blueprint I just found for a giant hammer sounds like it could be fun. Or...

Yet they've quadrupled their investment if they bought stock a year ago.

I really dig Tessa's in-ring aggression. Good stuff from her and Alisha. And I like that they are continuing the Allie/Kiera partnership.

DAY 17 INSTATHOUGHTS ELGIN-MAKABE Elgin came dressed as a big Christmas Cake for some reason. Don't see the point in these two pretending to have a wrestling match for five minutes before throwing bombs. Just get out there and go hard for six minutes, it'll be MUCH better. Ending was good. *** YOSHI-PAGE was ticking along nicely but they really pulled me in with the Buckshot and the Destroyer (even though this is a stupid move). Whatever the world saw in Adam Cole, I see in Page. ***1/2 SUZUKI-FALE fuck right off. not even the run-ins made sense with Desperado just standing there. -* EVIL-WHITE think they tried for the big semi-final performance to pick things up but the same old routine at the end leaves this with a ceiling of ***1/2. TANAHASHI-OKADA not their best but brilliant all the same. ****1/2 change in perception (mine) after the tournament PAGE, YOSHI EVIL, MAKABE, TANAHASHI, WHITE SUZUKI, FALE, OKADA, ELGIN

I would have paid much more to see it die.

Execution on the double count out matters though, so while we just saw it, it could be done better. Johnny winning seems to early, but there are so many ways they can go its nice. No easy predictions is always a plus.

Punk being a jerk to basically every person in his life bums me out ?

Punk is an asshole. I'm shocked.

How deep? They meant know in the biblical sense More like Nigel West Dick-IN

You read my mind.

If they're so fucking shook over competition, maybe, oh, I don't know, PUT ON BETTER SHOWS?!? No, clearly the answer is to keep the writing and creative as shitty as humanly possible, but just use the gravitational pull of WWE to pull in anyone worth a shit to waste them too. Competition wouldn't even fucking matter if Raw were consistently good, if SDL were consistently good, and if the PPVs meant anything. Instead, SDL is barely watchable most weeks, 30 minutes of Raw is all that's watchable out of 3 fucking hours, and all of the PPVs suck.

Vince dying or leaving would bring me back. If the independent contractor definition were overturned in court and they had to provide benefits to all wrestlers, that wouldn't sink them, sure. But it might slow their hiring since hiring new people becomes much more expensive than it used to be.