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More importantly than any of this, on June 9, 1991, the Berzerker pinned Koko B. Ware at the Civic Center in Erie, PA.

One of these men made a rap album.

Her “Karen” gimmick is the one of the two most timely gimmicks in WWE history. Zack Ryder in 09 is the other.

The greatest love stories ever told

Exactly. I can't see any situation where a progressive, "woke" company as AEW markets itself to be brings in Cornette. Aside from being fired for the racist commentary, didn't he say something on his pod about how AEW should be exploiting Nyla Rose's trans status for a gimmick or angle? I know there are two Jim Cornettes: the real dude who can be a calm rational, smart wrestling historian who is a joy to listen to, and the worker who is just a gross person who conducts himself like it's still the territory days and wrestling hasn't progressed since 1982. Cornette can't help himself from being the latter, especially when it counts. Also, we've seen the Cornette cycle happen over and over with lots of companies and the guy never met a bridge he didn't end up burning. Get hired Honeymoon period Cornette's issues get in the way of acting like a rational human being and shit blows up Get fired Talk shit on the former company on any platform he can get AEW doesn't need that shit.

It's the 25th anniversary of THE MATCH My God, where does the time go?

To be fair, the “What’s Charlotte going to do after a loss?” bingo card is pretty much just one giant free space that says “laugh it off.” This is some sort of kayfabe-adjacent reaction. You’re mad at the interference, which they wanted, and mad because someone robbed you of the desired finish, which again is what they wanted, but your anger is directed at the company instead of the heel, which clearly isn’t the desired outcome.

Reminds me of this screengrab from a few years ago:

I would suggest that people underestimate how much Becky presented her character in a way which targeted/exploited smark narratives about Charlotte, especially on social media. Even as a ‘heel’ she was strongly pushing the idea that she was ‘held back’ because she wasn’t blonde and a Flair, and that Charlotte was ‘handed everything’. While technically a heel, she dropped any attacks on fans after one promo, encouraged fans to boo Charlotte on social media (hence #boothewoo) and it led to the style of character she’s used since which blends face/heel elements while frequently weaponising smark narratives/language. Even if you take away how hard Charlotte put her over, I don’t think things would have worked as well if Becky had been against anyone else. The Nia punch was very important too, but a lot had already happened up to that point. Plus the ‘wrong alignment’ and smark paranoia about Charlotte’s booking made it seem cooler to cheer Becky on, and easier to give Becky a super push while avoiding the usual fan fears that Becky was a ‘chosen one’.

I blame the goddamn Red Rooster.

My waifu body pillow has a no kissing policy. It's strictly business.

Rollerball Rocco vs Kung Fu To be honest, I bounced right off this match a couple times, and just went to do something else. Which I have not done with many matches that were far worse. It's just that this... I wasn't quite sure what to do with it. But something about the weather suddenly being brutally hot reminded me of a day during summer vacation and my Grandma's house. She had cable, and didn't much care what I used it on, whereas my parents did not, and were relatively strict about violent entertainment. I sat there in the air conditioning with a bowl of cereal and watched a worked martial arts fighting show--probably WMAC Masters based on Googling, but I can't remember. Anyway, it seemed at the time to be the coolest thing anyone could ever see. This was a lot like that. If I had stumbled on this match at my Grandma's house during summer vacation while eating Raisin Bran--she didn't ever have kid's cereal, but that was fine--I would have had no interest in seeing wrestling that looked any other way. And the kids in the room seemed to agree. Even watching it as my present-tense self, the athleticism and execution is obviously impressive, and they're pretty creative deploying those strengths. Rocco gets his hand karate chopped, and then headbutted. That's pretty great. And it doesn't matter and he wins anyway after a low blow, but that's fine. I'm still not sure what to do with this now, but if it was funnel cake and I was 8, walking around the fair grounds, I'd eat it, love it, and maybe even remember it.

To be fair plenty of people hate Charly too. You have Zelina, Sasha, Bayley, the IIconics, etc. Charly went through that period last year where she was kind of dick in interviews. Bayley had to hold Sasha back from kicking her ass at least once or twice and that was when they were still faces.

Neither is Kawada with his fronts in

He's just imagining the time in the 6/9/95 tag he kneedropped Kobashi's knee and then the apocalypse happened.

I'm late catching up on this thread, but I love the crowd chanting "USA" and waving American flags as Sarge vanquishes the foreign menace form Nashville, Tennessee.

I think AEW would alienate a large chunk of their audience if Cornette showed up. That said 2020 has been so crazy it wouldn’t surprise me if by year end we had The Bucks (w/Meltzer) v FTR (w/Cornette) - Scaffold Match, where the Bucks win after a Vince Russo run in with his new team, the debuting Enzo & Cass.

This ?? comeback ?? should ?? be ?? for ??Christian ?? NOT ?? Edge ??

So, it was the thunder before the storm?

Obviously Charlotte has been protected for a long time, but... I do think Vince, HHH, and Steph believed Ronda Rousey was going to be around for more than one year, that they'd be able to broker a deal that would've seen her compete at WrestleMania this year. When this didn't happen, they opted not to run Charlotte/Becky again (maybe it was just obvious or too "been there done that") so it kinda makes sense that they reasoned, "Well, let's take our two biggest women's stars - Becky and Charlotte - and put them against the two biggest 'future stars' (aka the two top females from NXT)." Personally, I think there were better options on the actual main roster, but that's a different topic. The point is: Rousey left and Charlotte's stock goes up. More recently, Becky Lynch is also gone now. So, if you're looking at your depth chart, at a time when I believe the WWE projected they'd have Becky and potentially even Rousey (maybe to build the much-rumoured Horsewomen vs. Horsewomen match for SummerSlam), they now have neither. That means Charlotte is being depended on even more. Less recently, Sasha Banks taking a 4-month hiatus probably means she'll never get another top run and I'm not sure Vince has ever "got" Bayley. Again, Charlotte's stock rose when Banks left. I don't think Vince sees foreign talent, even Asuka, as ever being the "face of the company." Its only recently I feel like he's been willing to push European/British wrestlers. To me, though, the issue isn't so much the overexposure or over-pushing of Charlotte, its that, despite infinite hours of TV time and a bevy of talent, they've let other talent die on the vine. Some talents got a small push then were dropped soon after (Ember Moon, Ruby Riott), others haven't ever been treated as legit "serious" contenders despite showing improvement over the years (Liv Morgan, Carmella), and some have been delegated into tag work but because WWE Creative stinks, they're inexplicably kept away from the singles title picture despite there being interesting angles they could explore there (Bliss and Cross, Kairi Sane). TLDR: Blame Creative for not pushing other talent, not Charlotte for being a star.

It's a great trick but you can only do it once.

Rick Martel is awesome.

The issue with Charlotte isn't a lack of talent it's that everyone she feuds with is worse off after feuding with her. Rhea Ripley, we aren't even talking about her anymore. She had a ton of momentum but that's over for now. Charlotte didn't help the NXT women's division at all. They didn't need her. Now on RAW Asuka is champion again and the only person they can find for her to fight is Charlotte, again.

Charlotte's a conceited, spoiled brat who thinks she is the greatest women's wrestler of all-time. And in kayfabe (and even in reality), she really could be. She's had 12 title reigns in her career. How else is she supposed to act after a loss, especially one where she wasn't pinned for a title she does not want to attempt to regain? You brush it off and move on knowing you've beaten everyone there is to beat. Ric was always shaking off losses if he thought they were a fluke. I keep on saying this. Charlotte should always be at the top of the division. Has anyone else had more MOTYCs than her over the past three years -- either women or men? She's been in a bunch of not just awesome matches, but truly iconic matches. She's an athletic freak. She's a really good promo with otherworldly presence and the daughter of the most beloved wrestler of all-time and carries on his legacy of heeling. I look at the Women's Division sort of like how men's tennis has been over the past decade. The Four Horsewomen are like Federer/Nadal/Novak/Murray (before his injuries). Asuka's like Stan Wawrinka (three majors and some dominant stretches). Alexa doesn't have an exact comp since she's won titles, but I think you can compare her to Danil Medvedev -- not quite the talent as the others, but dripping in personality. Shayna is also any of the other young guns, since she hasn't had a breaktrhough main roster title win yet. Kari Sane is Gael Monfils - incredibly flashy and entertaining, but not a serious threat for a singles title. As great as Sasha is, I'll also take a comparison for her as Nick Kyrgios when she's being pouty.

Yeah all those tags are quite speedy as I recall. Looking it up the Ishin Gundan/JPW crew was a lot bigger than expected. Akira Taue originally even started with them before transferring to the AJ Dojo which was another surprising fact.

That is a damn good fight card.

There's a certain looseness to things in 58 still. There's the idea that you can just do whatever to your opponent and it doesn't have to be rote or established. Look at how Corn just chucks him back into the ropes here: Grabbing this whole exchange: Interesting entrance to the gutbuster and then Peruano's next move. Look at how he undercuts the arm to lock in the hammerlock. Eventually he'd roll back with that into a hold. Slugfest: as a side-note, it's kind of cool to see how in this footage the knee crusher isn't just a move that giants did. That's one of those things that was warped over the years.

"Tell me, schatze, is it twue what they say about the way you people are... gifted?" *zip*

I've always wondered if Jumbo accidentally spiking Tenryu on a powerbomb--knocking him out--to emphatically end the first Triple Crown defense influenced Baba's thinking regarding the stylistic drift towards head-drops and violent, decisive finishes based off of them. (Video begins at the finish.) Also, the famous 6/9/95 tag happened 25 years ago today. Whatever the style was called, that was as good as it--or any other, I think--could be.

The New Day Podcast is a must-listen. I am plugging it to my non-wrestling friends. Legit got teary at a few points. Kofi talking about how he develops an escape route while going out for a jog really messed me up.

The term Shitenno itself comes from Buddhism and was later used to describe famous groups of retainers and Samurai generals. Later on, it was used for judokas. I think it's a bit silly referring to wrestlers as Shitenno, but apparently the fans and media have done it since the 60s when Inoki, Baba, Oki and Yoshimura were considered Japanese Pro-Wrestling Shitenno. The Japanese magazines do love naming everything. They had a name for the Tsuruta vs. Tenryu feud -- The Tsururyu Confrontation (or Crane Dragon Confrontation) based on the nickname for the Tsuruta/Tenryu tag team (Crane Dragon Combi or simply Crane Dragon.)

The guy who should have taken the belt off him 6 months ago, Keith Lee. Seriously, NXT's total waste of Keith Lee pinning Rollins and taking Reigns to the limit just infuriates me. He is so clearly the guy in NXT who can actually break out, not the Ciampa/Gargano/Cole trio.

I saw an interview with Christian the other day where he said he understands people want him back like Edge, but his injury was different from Edge's and he doesn't think it's worth the risk to return and is at peace with his retirement. That main event was terrific, was watching it on a slight delay on the DVR and thought "Wow, they're actually going to have a finish because the show is almost over and there's not enough time for a run-in" then realized that I was reading how much time was left was wrong, and, alas, then came Nia... Drew and Asuka as vicious, stiff killers who like to joke around is a weird thing for the two world champs to have in common. I like this sudden realization that "Hey, the women seem to be doing well and someone greenlit women's tag titles...why aren't we using them?!" and all of a sudden you have this weird renewed focus on them. I actually really LOVE the plexiglass, because it gives an all-new thing for people to smash each other into and it sounds great and violent on TV. I'd be inclined to keep it around past the pandemic.

I would love to see a Christian comeback. But he knows Vince hates him so why bother. He would make a great heel manager for someone though. Charlotte vs. Asuka is pretty much the reason I made it through the whole show. That would have been an amazing big ppv match. Please don't let Nia win on Sunday.

Nice that they gave Asuka and Charlotte about 35 minutes so that Nia Jax could fuck it up at the end. Oh, and again, more IIconics actually beating people up, please.

If you had “Charlotte laughs off a loss” in post-PPV bingo, congrats.

Amazingly (or maybe not), jim said today that hes been getting tweets and emails from people surprised he was not on the side of the racist cops killing black folks.

Given the news of the last week, I would say there's a pretty big reason that it would backfire there. To put it a better way- given the controversy that got Jim Cornette fired from NWA, how can AEW put out comments saying "Hulk Hogan has been blackballed from All Elite Wrestling for his racist comments 13 years ago and he will never work for AEW", while at the same time bringing in a guy fired from NWA for racist comments just a few months ago?

Creative aside, they were still doing great gates and buy rates well into 99. All of the figures from that time are suspect anyway. Bischoff has essentially admitted to using his discretion when it came to what fiscal year some stuff was reported on, so some of 97’s profits were probably reported in 98, and 98’s in 99. Once Ted Turner was a non factor after the merger, Time Warner just used the same creative accounting to make WCW (which was legitimately struggling) look as bad as possible because they didn’t want to be in the wrestling business.

So something like nine chinlocks, four finishers each, two reversed finishers each, and fifteen minutes of it will be closeups of conflicted/tortured/sad/“why did you make me descend to this heart of darkness?” facial expressions.

The moment Cornette shows up is the moment I'm done with a promotion.

A Lamborghini Diablo and a samurai sword? This dude was basically living out 9 year old me's fantasy life.

Well, yeah, but Savage only turned to rap after Hogan got him blackballed from Metallica. Metal was Savage's first love.

I tweeted last night that I hope their match Sunday is legit great. I enjoyed the MVP/Lashley vs Raiders tag last night. I like this new aggressive heel Lashley, and he and Drew can have just an all out entertaining slugfest. Also, it's the one match that might benefit from WWE's usual fanbase not being in attendance because there won't be some preconceived notion around Lashley that we should just be bored the entire time or drown out the match with RUSEV DAY chants.