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I'd love to see EC3 and Roode in a rich assholes tag team

Aren't we all excited about AEW and the injection of freshness its given the North American wrestling scene? Dave is no different. We are all jonesing for AEW to succeed.

*looks at G1 blocks*

Vince just sucks at maintaining a stars credibility these days. Seriously I was joking about AEW pulling a WrestleMania 2 by having multiple locations for All Out. The WWE if they weren’t so gun shy of having big-time stars again, could in fact have multiple WrestleMania’s on different continents at the same time with their population of 1,000 talented wrestlers. But they are so purposely incompetent about it. Jon Moxley after only a few weeks on the indies, and Japan has looked like the genuine modern superstar Steve Austin we all thought he could be. But the company was so gung-ho about downgrading him to goofy sidekick status, and making his heel rival even goofier. They could’ve had that modern Austin for themselves, but they were like “No, we’re good with what we have”.

I know I've said it before, but I still can't believe they gave up on EC3 that quick. A guy built like that who can talk, with a modern Million Dollar Man gimmick? Seems like someone Vince would have pushed way too hard way too fast.

This idea that Dave doesn't like WWE and is completely in the bag for AEW is pretty funny. I mean, have any of you actually read the Observer or regularly listened to WOR? I'm guessing for many it's no and you just see others report on what was said on WOR. If you did regularly listen to WOR and read the Observer, you'd know how Dave frustratingly defends WWE constantly. Alvarez is the one who really doesn't like WWE and Dave is always arguing with him about it. Even when Dave tries to compare WWE to WCW, he still winds up defending it, sometimes in the same breath. Regarding AEW, Dave is always bearish on their success. He didn't think All In would be an immediate sell out, thought that DoN wouldn't sell out immediately and said it would probably do 7000 to 8000 seats the first day, he predicted a much lower buyrate for that show, and he again thought All Out would only do 7000 or 8000 seats the first day. Even on Friday he couldn't flat out say that this company is selling out like they are because they're that good or people want it. It's always couched with a statement like "a lot of these people aren't WWE fans so I don't know how they're doing it" or "scalpers will probably make up 2000 of the seat buys." He's also been realistic about how they're probably not going to do this when they're putting on a show each week. I will say that yes, Dave is more excited for AEW and he probably sees that as the better promotion, but damn, it would be fucking weird to not say that. AEW is doing almost everything right while WWE is sitting the bed more and more each week. If one of my duties is to review the product, I don't see how you could heap that much praise on WWE lately, but even then Dave still tries to comment on something good or tries to defend a booking decision or whatever.

For Father's Day, Minoru Suzuki is your new daddy.

I just signed up for it as well. I love it so far. I was watching the most recent Beyond Wrestling show on there last night.

Oh my God. That is just about as good of a lineup as they could've done and will be the first time I'm hyped for NJPW this year. Taichi was the name I looked for first. The pop in the video shows where he is at even if he'll end with probably only 2 or 3 wins. A Block is fucking ridiculous. I don't even understand. It's cool that KENTA is in there too. Absolutely the right call on Suzuki. His body can't handle it. Last year doing his 30th anniversary match with Okada in the rain and the followup in the tournament was a fitting end to his run at the top. This should be the start of him fighting the transition and Zack inexorably taking the top spot in the faction (never change the name). I was down on last year's tournament from the block announcements and we all knew it wouldn't be able to live up to the highest of high standards the previous two or three tournaments set. It over achieved but still wasn't there. With this lineup, we could be looking at the best month of pro wrestling ever. Hyperbole be damned. KENTA vs. Ibushi. Taichi vs Moxley and Taichi vs. Yano. ZSJ in the block with his best rivals: SANADA and Ibushi. Is this the year they start to pull the trigger on SANADA? I cannot wait.

Happy father's day.

Why should Taichi stuff money down YOH's pants?

Happy Father's Day, DVDVR dads. What are the best father-son/daughter moments in wrestling? Surely nothing tops Dusty's "the view never changes" promo.

The NBA is the best. In the past two weeks: 1) Toronto wins. 2) KD and Klay go down in the friggin’ Finals and, as a result, a free agency class that could change the next half decade of the NBA is tossed out the window. 3) A minority owner of the Golden State Warriors shoved Kyle Lowry during a game (which we forgot about entirely). 4) A friggin’ Sherrif’s Officer tries to card Masai Ujiri in the seconds after he watches his work win a chip over one of the best dynasties of all-time. It is alleged that Ujiri smacked him in the face during the deal. I wish “allegation” was true and followed by “knocked out teeth of a glorified security guard.” 5) AD forcing his way to LA... which is also one of the biggest dumpster fires in ownership, and they just traded away 900 draft picks and a bunch of decent young talent. Watch tomorrow Kawhi signs with like Sacramento.

I am a dad! My wife and I adopted our beautiful and amazing son about six weeks ago. We had been waiting to adopt for about two years. We got a phone call at 10 pm on a Sunday night. We brought our son home the next evening. We became parents with about 16 hours notice. But he is the best and being a dad is amazing.

Since complaining about Joey Ryan is now passe, do we have a resident "I don't care for Orange Cassidy" person yet? If not, I volunteer. I thought I like funny wrestling, but I cannot handle that much ironic detachment. I feel like I'm Bruno Kirby talking about music in Good Morning Vietnam and recommending a nice polka or some Perry Como over the Beach Boys.

I find it hilarious when people get on Dave for his biases and closeness with some of the performers/management. Like, yeah, sure. But all media should be consumed with healthy skepticism and an awareness of the tastes and machinations of the people making it. Why do I get the sense that the people who are most concerned about Dave's JOURNALISTIC INTEGRITY don't read anything other than wrestling news? Dave being too close to some of the people he covers is hardly the most problematic example of that sort of relationship.

He's just biased in favour of things he likes! He should be a objective journalism!

I remember the Hi-V vs Zandig's Army being good as well as the Blkout vs Chris Ca$h team, that one had Jack Evan's nearly killing himself

It's probably worth it just for Beyond. I want to try to get back into Chikara. I love the amount of different promotions on there.

Davis is still only 26! We can’t judge a guy as playoff winner or loser this early in his career. Two seasons ago there was a legit argument he was the best player in the league. He carried a thin team to the playoffs after Boogie went down and then capitalized on a few late season additions to SWEEP the third seeded Blazers. A team that was much deeper than the one that just made the WCF. Those Robinson/Garnett playoff runs mentioned above would have been a hell of a lot shorter if they were playing GS in an early round. A few of these Pelicans teams have been ok, but some have been absolute dogshit. Y’all remember the Asik years, right? Im not gonna ding the guy for missing the playoffs early in his career in a historically stacked conference with varying levels of dogshit to mediocre surrounding him. That being said, it’s time to prove it. If they get a 3rd guy in there the Lakers will no doubt be the preseason favorites. No more excuses here.

What do you mean "rewatch"?

Nothing tops ROH vs. CZW Cage of Death at ROH Death Before Dishonor 2006. Perfectly booked that.

At least David Robinson had regular season success. And a scoring title. What the fuck has Anthony Davis done?

It's not NXT's fault. They were looking to push him even before Finn Balor signed. He got hurt. They tried again with some matches against Ohno and Black. KENTA got hurt again. When he broke Kendrick's eye socket with his signature move that many associate more with CM Punk, he was pretty much done. It's a shame it NXT/205 Live didn't go better for KENTA, but it wasn't because they didn't take him seriously. The whole "they treat outsiders like garbage on the main roster" rhetoric holds no water, anyway. The homegrown guys are the exception these days, not the rule. The women are probably more even split.

INTO. MY. VEINS.

*coughDavidRobinsoncough* ... And now that Will is going to ban me

Godzookie is the Kaiju George Gulas.

My absolute favorite part of last season was Lonzo Ball saying he refused to play for New Orleans. LOL STFU Big BabyCake Brand.

The Blues parade might have been the least organized and best parade in sports history. Highlights! - The plan was for the Blues players to stay on there floats to get to the big podium under the arch. Players say fuck that, leave there floats, and celebrate with the fans around the parade route. - Brayden Schenn starts a Champagne Shower for fans around the parade route - Robert Thomas, age 19, just walking down the street surrounded by police drinking beer. - Jordan Binnington, the stoic goaltender becomes the fucking center of attention and most charismatic member of the team. First, he joins a high school marching band in there performance by joining the color guard, then proceeds to take a Trombone and march with the band for a bit. - After that, Binnington proceeds to borrow someones electric mini bike thing and drive down the road with it. - While this is going down Tarasenko is walking down the side of the road letting all fans in the front row touch it. Which led to this photo - With tons of other stuff going down during this, the parade which was only supposed to go 1 hour ended up going just about 3. - Finally everyone gets to the stage and things go a little more textbook from there.... until Binnington gets on stage. Then this happens - After that the bombs fly for a while, before Larry Robinson gets on stage. The conversation goes with this being his 10th ring, which finger would it be going to. This is his response I love hockey.

And apparently this is a thing... Big gamble. Bron Bron better be nice and not pick on AD or pout too much or else he'll legit cruise the fuck on out. Interesting. I mean, it seems like there's a bit of a gulf between #3 and 4 at the draft this year and if you have LeBron and Davis long term those will be shitty picks. It's all about locking up AD.

I can’t believe this was used to hype up a world title feud.

I'm reporting you to CSIS. Your Canadian citizenship is getting revoked, pal ?

They took Kerry Von Erich’s, and Jake Roberts head for these, didn’t they?

I think I'm more terrified of what Jerry would do with the glove than Thanos.

As we roll into the middle of 2019, it's obvious that not everyone has been here since 1999. Some people who come across the board might not even have been born in 1999. As such, we don't all come from the same background and same experience and same history of watching wrestling. Some of us have a lot of expertise. Others are curious. Let's bridge that gap as we're all more likely to do things together. A few years back we did a fairly broad Four Pillars [Remedial Wrestling]. It sort of fell off but not before a number of people really did delve into the matches and, I think, learned a lot. This will be a smaller, tighter project, though maybe one with more individual matches. The focus is Dustin Rhodes. Obviously with his match a couple of weeks ago, a match where he portrayed himself as Dustin instead of being Goldust, he's on a lot of people's minds again and it's obvious some people haven't had a chance to go look at his earlier work, work that means quite a bit for some of us who were coming up or watching wrestling in the early-mid 90s. The idea here is that we're going to present some matches, some history, and people will write up their thoughts and everyone can compare notes. We'll take it slow. I intend to present a good number of matches organized by different phases of his carer. Some will be available on the Network. Some will be available on youtube or elsewhere. I'll offer some additional matches as well, though they're more optional. At the very least, I'll write up my thoughts as we go. Hopefully everyone else will do the same. We'll start with his pre-WCW work, which generally consists of his time teaming with Kendall Windham in 1988 WCW, his time in Florida after Dusty got fired, his USWA (Memphis and Texas) work, and his first WWF run. Plus a tiny bit of time in Japan. Mainly, we're looking at 1988-the very beginning of 1991. There's not a lot to say about him teaming with Kendall in WCW. There's a match with the original MX, some Cruel Connection matches, a share of jobber matches, including a Mike Jackson one, and this one vs Perez/Zbyszko (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_f_9B3r746c), which is mainly only worth seeing for the ridiculous finish that makes Dustin and Kendall look like morons. He was young, he was green. Dusty was going to be careful in how much he pushed him. With Florida, the match to check out is vs Terry Funk. Obviously, Terry is doing most of the heavy lifting, but it still holds up really well despite how green Dustin was: I haven't seen every bit of USWA footage for Dustin. There are a decent amount of TV tags out there. I'd point you to a few things quickly. The first is this music video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SILMwFV9Vqo) which is a music video from Memphis because everyone got one. The second is Dustin teaming with Bill Dundee against Rough and Ready in a jobber match (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHzik6ps2As&t=9s). And third, what I'll look at too is a match vs Devastation Incorporated for USWA Texas. Everyone needs to see Hickerson as PY Chu Hi at least once. That puts us into 90. We do have a little bit of Dustin in Japan but it's not essential. Here's a few minutes of Dustin vs Davey Boy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hG3ZGVhKYdQ ---- So that's Dustin pre-WWF. There are obviously other things out there. For instance, I'm pretty sure Dusty Rhodes Jr. & Harley Race vs Masanobu Fuchi & The Great Kabuki from 4/20/89 exists somewhere in the wild. There's a decent amount of Dustin vs Tony Anthony or Gary Young that might be out there too. I think you get the idea though. For WWF, you have to know that he was brought in during Dibiase's feud with Dusty. His Dark Match Try Out was vs Black Bart on the 4/24/90 Challenge taping and maybe we'll get to see it someday. He started on the loop vs guys like Haku, Akeem, Hercules, Buddy Rose, and Bob Bradley, got on the MSG card in September against Paul Diamond (this made German TV and I want to see it since I'm not sure I ever have, so I'm putting it here): And subsequently the great angle/TV match against Dibiase where Ted boasted Dustin couldn't survive ten minutes against him: which set up the Dustin/Dusty vs Virgil/Dibiase feud for Royal Rumble 1991. After this, Dibiase pivoted to Piper and Virgil; Dusty's run was over and he was heading back to WCW. Dustin was coming with him. Apparently Vince told them that he'd have Dustin in his clutches (everybody has his price) someday once again on the way out. There's not a lot else truly important to see from the WWF run. We'll give everyone a little time to watch, comment, and potentially suggest anything else from this period, and we'll start on 1991 WCW next.

This is reminding me that I should probably start reading Legion again. I was trying to build up to Great Darkness Saga.

Making the finals would be a step forward. Although his loss to Naito last year was just sorta fine, losing to Naito in the finals might be better and it would certainly be bigger. He could just win too, I suppose. Part of me thinks Moxley will make the finals, because you’re only going to have him this year, so you might as well. And if that’s true, you want him to lose in the finals to someone who would really benefit. SANADA would fit that role. Mostly I like how wide open this all seems. Neither block winners nor the finals are at all clear to me; but beyond that, there will be a lot of “could go either way” matches. (Ultimately though, I think Naito takes it, defends the shot and his belt, and becomes double champ. Revenge in every step.)

Fury is suppose to be back either 9/21 or 10/5. The latter would the same day as Whittaker vs. Adesanya in Vegas for UFC 243. So the UFC prelims could be the lead in if it is on ESPN.

Picked up Horizon Zero Dawn for $10 and bought the Contra Anniversary Collection yesterday too. I still have a goal to get the Ebony Warrior fight in Skyrim before I play anything else though. My character is currently at level 74 so I'm almost there.

At least Steph smiled like a normal person when she was young.