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Waltman was always great. X-Pac the character was like a mall cinnamon roll; fun for a bit, but stale super quick. I always thought Waltman was like a really great leadoff hitter in baseball. A traditional leadoff hitter. You don’t necessarily have to have one to win a World Series, but it certainly makes winning one easier. It’s sad that he lost so much of his prime time substance abuse, because he was a fantastic tv worker who got reactions consistently during the hottest period in the businesses history…

Far as I can tell, this is from '51 Edit: most likely 10/3/1950 according to Cagematch https://www.cagematch.net/?id=1&nr=294335

My youngest is 17 and he just started saying the F WORD in front of me. I was aghast. I actually don't cuss much in real life though I use the word FUCK a thousand times a day here.

X-Pac was awesome.

If we ARE going into Punk vs Mox II... let's think about it for a second, especially looking at how Punk vs Page was worked and how Mox has been working all year. This could be leading to Mox as the out of control aggressive monster, a hungry shark, against a damaged Punk, an asshole, but 100% the crowd's asshole in Chicago with everything to prove, having to fight from underneath and brush up against his own sins and limitations, being broken inside and out, up against a man who overcame his demons only to express to the world that he wished for nothing more than to be a demon himself.... all in front of a molten crowd with high stakes. That's some pretty gripping stuff right there.

I think we end up with a Cobra Kai type deal with the Garcia/Danielson stuff. Garcia/Robby chooses Danielson/Larusso over Jericho/Kreese, which causes friction with Yuta/Miguel and Moxley/Johnny. Hopefully leading to Moxley creating his own Eagle Fang dojo of course.

It could be all of this or that someone just made the shit up. This is wrestling, being a flat out lie is always the most likely option.

A lot to unpack here; many creative and production choices:

Sammy is PERFECT heel. He is a total heat machine. He is the best heel. Dante Martin is totally different animal all together.

I don't ask for much but here's another look at Juan Gil Don's super mares (and a kick just because). If we aren't seeing 3 different guys doing this regularly in 2023, then what is the point of any of this, right? Come on, people. Steal this!

I spend like half my day at work in the bathroom, so I’m sympathetic to Rosa.

On that same note, and maybe some people who work with her feel different, as an outsider I'm not too eager to attribute malice or carelessness to every in-ring misstep taken by a person who's so banged up they sometimes can't feel their legs.

?

It was kind of getting to the point of sounding like a kid that was suddenly allowed to cuss. Like, my five-year-old said "shit" once, I made the mistake of chuckling, and it was on.

You can distinguish them as Hair and Bald now, too.

If the DVDVR boards didn't exist, I wonder if I'd feel alone in being ridiculously stoked for Dustin vs Claudio? Let's take it a step further: If the DVDVR boards didn't exist, would I even be super-excited for this match in the first place? But the DVDVR boards do, in fact, exist... so, I am all worked up about this and I know I am not alone. Remember how this was set up? ROH champion Claudio came out to tip his (metaphorical) hat to Ricky Steamboat and say he wants to be a fighting champion. Then Dustin came out to answer the open challenge. Then we all marked out. Because this is going to be good. Good guy vs good guy. Wrestling machine vs wrestling machine, if you will. Dustin is going to do his "hang on a second, I gotta catch my breath" thing. CeasaROH is going to Giant Swing Dusty's son. And we are all going to mark out some more. I don't ask for anything more than that from my pro wrestling, most days. I'm glad to see everyone having so much fun with the active rumour mill this week. My guess is it tickles some kind of important nostalgia for what it was like to be online during the attitude era for a lot of people. I lack that particular nostalgia, having been teaching in post-conmunist central Europe for most of that period. So, it seems I'm missing out on the "hot goss" fun. But I am all in on the good wrestling. So, we all have stuff to enjoy this week. Hooray! Speaking of: Dark Order vs House of Metal! I scrupulously avoid spoilers, but I strongly suspect I already know what the result is here, just from extrapolating comments I have read without clicking spoiler boxes. Nonetheless, I am stoked. I can hardly wait to see how these two trios interact in the ring. Odds are, every match on this show will be really distinct. This match and Claudio vs Dustin will be totally different kinds of matches, but I am excited for both. This is a thing I really like about AEW! Speaking of: Sammy and Tay vs Ortiz and Ruby!! For those of you into Hot Goss, are you more excited for this because Eddie Piefaced Sammy for calling him fat and Ortiz is Mad King's friend? I hope so! I kind of am, too! Damn it! I guess I'm not "above" the Hot Goss stuff after all. Who doesn't want to see Ortiz punch Sammy and Ruby kick Tay? And who won't kind of enjoy the, I dunno what to call it, frustration(?) when Sammy and Tay cheat and then tongue kiss? Anger? Whatever it is that makes it fun to boo. Speaking of: Ryan Nemeth! Boo! Kill him, Wardlow! Something that those of us who watch the YouTube shows will enjoy more than those of us who don't. Although, probably, everyone will enjoy this. Also: Jade speaks! Will she say "That bitch" and "Cut the shit, Tony"? I predict that she will. Also: "Iron Savages" my ass! But honestly I got so excited thinking about Claudio vs Dustin that I forgot I was doing a gimmick this week. I am bad at kayfabe.

lol linking to a Deadspin article. For fucks sake. Confirmation bias is strong.

Sleep paralysis but its Will Ospreay in the backseat of your car yelling "BRUV LET ME GET THE AUX BRUV" while you are trying to drive

I'll get there. Unless I blow my hamstring out or something. This is a marathon and the wrestling isn't going anywhere. Had a really fun night of watching stuff last night actually. 9/19/86: Takada (c) vs Koshinaka: I take these as they come. Obviously I have some sense of how I'm going to feel about certain things by now, but each match gets a fair shake as I start it. Informed, but fair. I know this one was fairly well regarded compared to some of the other junior stuff around it, even with the same wrestlers, but I'm happy to say it was really good. The story, as best as I can say it, and this reminds me a lot of the Fujinama/Maeda match actually, is that Koshinaka had to wrestle his absolute best match to stand up to Takada. He had to be one step ahead, ready for everything that came his way. And he was! It is one of those things that you can do with these UWF guys after a string of dominant matches from them, but I don't think it's all sustainable. In some ways, a big story of 1986 has been Koshinaka leveling up, first having no right to be in the ring with these guys, to losing his belt to one, to trying to find a way to solve the puzzle, to this where he's absorbing three kicks to get a takedown on the forth. There's a moment fairly deep into here where Takada slaps him across the face, mimicking the slap that Koshinaka did in a lot of their encounters early to try to get him to make a mistake. That, as much as anything else, shows how far Koshinaka came. Things were given time here. Nothing was rushed. Everything had weight. There was no real popping up. Things were built to. Towards the stretch the near-falls really mattered and were exciting. This isn't the best match in 86, but I do think it's the best match that these two could have and it's still a testament to how far they, and especially Koshinaka, had come. It's a great moment when he wins the title back, one of the best of the year, and I think the guy is super punchable, so good on them. 9/23/86: Fujiwara vs Yamada: Man, this was good. It was Fujiwara putting Yamada through the paces, but you could tell just how much regard he must have had for him, because he kept giving him openings to try things and look like he belonged in there. Yamada could have spent his whole career in matches like this, working the mat, trying some tricked out submissions using his speed and agility, fighting from underneath, working towards the rope, and yes, playing into Fujiwara's traps, and we'd think that he'd be great at that alone, and then he went on to do so much more still. For all that we talk about Fujiwara's skill or his attitude or his spirit or his credibility, he just had this mastery of the moment which is almost unprecedented in pro wrestling history (Terry Funk, Negro Casas, and that's just about it, right? Maybe a guy like Eddy at his absolute best?). Fujiwara just got it. It's like he could pause time and gauge a thousand imperceptible little things between his opponent and the crowd and every match that came before him and many that would come after and just could just pull and tug at he strings of fate and then start time up again. Like he was walking through air and everyone else was walking through water. The finish is amazing, with Fujiwara locking in the armbar, only for Yamada to get to the ropes and then try something different, just to end up back in it. Four times. It made Yamada look like a star for surviving. It made Fujiwara look like a god for being able to put it on him again and again at will. It's this sort of magical finish that felt so light and effortless and brilliant and was light years above what everyone else was doing and he just made it seem so easy. And after the match he seemed so happy to have gone through it with Yamada and so proud of him even if he wasn't one of his factionmates. Just magic. Fujiwara is magic.

If you couldn’t tell by my flurry of late responses, I just got to watch this afternoon, and mostly avoided spoilers (other than Rosa). That opening segment was how to open a show with talk/angle-building instead of a match. Agree with everything said about Garcia as an actor and really selling the “insecure jock asshole” character. He’s always reminded me in a weird way of Mark Wahlberg, and even more so now. Lethal-Dax was awesome, incredibly hard hitting, a little bit of a surprise at the end followed by a huge surprise after. I like Rosa, she’s been off lately and I’ve said for weeks I think she’s working hurt. Maybe she’s also a little mad about having to lose, but Baker is hardly the person to call her out on that, or on being unprofessional in the ring, and that shitty cheap shot about working hurt. Storm should get the title and Hayter-Baker should have a falling out. Baker-King was fine, I’d like to see more of KiLynn and less of Britt. The Father-Son match was a great angle in a very pedestrian match. I feel very correctly called out for shitting on NAO while praising The Acclaimed catchphrases. Difference is Acclaimed are likable and are good to excellent workers. Really looking forward to SitG/Acclaimed. Mox-Punk was a shocker, in a good way. The main was over-the-top in a way that I mostly enjoyed, with my quibbles about Davis’s weak strikes, Penta spamming as always, and the overbooking of the end (and a couple of the spots being a little too much). PAC is so fucking good. Ospreay is so good at being a prick who is incredibly athletic and mostly very smooth with his moves. Rey Fenix deserves a singles title for flippy dudes. Aussie Open are a WiP although they do bump really well for tall dudes. Penta gets on my last nerve. Looking forward to tonight!

Update (read in the Gene Okerlund voice from WWF "UPDATE" segments of the late '80s/early '90s) on WBD and AEW: "Makes no negative waves" seems like a gross underselling of AEW delivering good ratings especially relative to other sports/wrestling tv contracts.

Check out Tito Psicosis here.

The Ass Boys will now be the Butt Boys

My daughter has started using "Bruv" all the goddamn time. We live in Kentucky.

When the Iron Savages are turned on, are they....the randy savages?

I want the main event of All Out to be a 30 minute wrestling clinic with Mox defending against Colt Cabana, where Canaba hits the GTS at the end, only for Mox to kick out and come back for the win.

Fitting that folks are talking about X-Pac because my immediate reaction to the language thing was "You think you can tell me what to do? You know who you're talkin' to?" followed by multiple crotch chops. Since I think the hiding in the bathroom aspect of the story is complete BS (cause unless someone was hiding the bathroom with Thunder Rosa or sitting in a stall, how would you know), I don't really care about the whole someone is going to beat someone up stuff. However, I will say I give Rosa a modicum of credit for actually fighting in a reputable MMA organization. She could have done what A LOT of folks have done, gone down to Mexico and fought window washers, secretaries, and desk clerks, and built up a record with no one being wise to it. She also could have done what Ilima Lei-Macfarlane did and start her career in an absolutely reprehensible organization like XFS that makes their bones on criminal mismatches between people who have some training and folks that clearly have none at all. Hell, IMO at least, her career is probably still marred or overshadowed by her KO'ing that "soccer mom" who had no business being anywhere near a cage, a ring, a jiu-jitsu mat, or whatever fighting surface you can think of. There are millions of people who have seen that video who have no idea that Macfarlane went on to have a halfway decent career in MMA. Unfortunately or ironically, that video went viral again just weeks ago right around the time of Macfarlane's last fight (which would have been her retirement fight had she lost). So now there are people that think that fight just happened when it happened several years ago (January 2015 to be exact). Weirdly enough, when Macfarlane started her run in Bellator, there were actual MMA fans who thought she was a knockout artist when in actuality that video is akin to someone getting assaulted in a World Star Hip Hop video. That one knockout was in no way representative or indicative of what she actually could do or did in MMA. Rosa could have done that or won like 15 consecutive amateur MMA fights over like some sixteen year old blue belts and people that watch MMA instructionals online. The sky is the limit when it comes to papering your record. In this era of the sport, I don't think anyone can be a wrestler AND an MMA fighter at the same time. You either do one or the other. And the sooner you make that choice, the better. Which leads me to the Punk thing... I do give Punk credit for one thing: He could have easily wiggled his way out of fighting, period. His whole signing only happened because the UFC had no stars really at the time, was transitioning between eras (GSP retired, Anderson Silva's reign came to an end, Brock was pretty much gone, Ronda wasn't a big, big star just yet), and was desperate. In that time between announcing he had signed with the UFC and when he actually fought, the UFC's fortune had turned around immensely. He could have said "fuck it" and just told Dana "I'm good." That's likely what he should've done because he would gotten more credit just doing some lower level NAGA competition and winning a bronze medal or doing what Tom Hardy just did, competing in some charity BJJ event, and have videos of you submitting just some random people. Even if he had some aptitude for MMA, there is less upside as you go up the ranks. I think Jake Paul is gonna be proof of that, eventually. Jake Paul is 60x better than Punk was at any type of fighting, BUT because he has some skills and a name, he's going to have to fight someone halfway decent. And he's going to become a bigger meme than Punk could have ever imagined because said halfway decent person is going to put him on a spectacular highlight reel. It's going to trend on Twitter for at least 24 hours. At least Logan knew better and decided WWE was more his thing so he isn't pressured into fighting anyone relevant. Jake really wants to be taken seriously. To me, Jake taking this seriously is as laughable as Punk if not more just because there is virtually zero upside in fighting if you didn't take this up at an early enough age. Even with Brock, the fact he just entered the sport as a freak athlete with legit credentials (granted he won a national wrestling title against a weak field) wasn't enough to overcome he had not taken enough time to learn the other aspects of MMA. Hell, same with Lashley. If this isn't what you do all the time, wrestler or not, your ceiling is much lower than everyone else. That's the reality of combat sports. That's why I find the notion of "well, Rosa wasn't good in her one fight so theoretically, she cannot actually fight" silly because unless we're bringing back Brawl for All so the business can get more exposed than thigh slapping, it doesn't really matter. Pie facing people seems to be about the limit for actual physical confrontation backstage. If that's the threshold, then Rosa has nothing to worry about. Moreover, if you are confronting people backstage with the threat of a physical altercation or just the idea you might be a real issue backstage, your time in the company will not be long. Ask Ivelisse about that. Long gone are the days of the Harris twins hemming up Shawn Michaels at MSG and Jacques Rougeau fucking up Dynamite Kid at a TV taping. People will have disagreements all the time, but folks enjoy also having their (well paying) jobs.

I am sure if you asked Meltzer he would say that the third best match on a New Japan show is better then Dundee vs. Lawler Loser Leaves Town

The other is namesake of a famous Tito! Wait... Goddammit!

Jamie Hayter is from Southampton; that's got to be the equivalent of half-a-dozen MMA fights.

After Christian puts over Jungle Boy they should do a Starks/Christian program.

Watched Licorice Pizza last night and loved it. Took a bit to get into as the 15y.o/25y.o romance was a little off-putting to think about, but the performances absolutely blew me away. How Alana Haim didn't get nominated last year, I do not know. I do see how she would be drawn to Gary. She's sad and lost and doesn't know what to do with her life and here's this kid who also doesn't know what to do with his life, but is just attacking it with gleeful abandon. Tom Waits showing up in anything is always going to get my attention. I've seen people online saying that his character is based on Peckinpah, John Huston or Mark Robson. While I'm sure it is a pastiche, I choose to believe Robson, just because the Val Lewton RKO horror movies of the 40s are one of my favourite eras in film. I had no idea Bradley Cooper was in this, playing Jon Peters no less. Absolutely unhinged performance. Perhaps it is recency bias (probably definitely) but this is now up there with The Master and There Will Be Blood as my favourite PT Anderson movies. Between this and having recently watched all of Columbo, 1970s Los Angeles is where I want to hang out. You can see Old Hollywood in the buildings, but they've started taking on a seedy, run down look. The collapse of the studio system has left an anything goes feel, as images and lives are no longer so tightly controlled. Plus everyone is now on coke and into new ageism and just batshit insane. Take me to the decrepit Hollywood sign and let me watch the town in all its fading glamour

Exclusive "foot"-age

I think Log is on to something with his post concerning trust. I trust AEW. I mean… I’m not going to let Tony Khan fuck my girlfriend or anything. But I have little to no hesitation spending my time and money on 50 dollar PPVs after years of paying 9.99 a month. Dax Harwood is so my current WOTY that it got me off my dead ass and dropped a couple of bucks on ROH tickets. Top to bottom the best live show I’ve ever attended in person. If I were capable I’d do a cartwheel. I’m not blind though. As positive as I am about AEW. I even had the thought when ever I’d hear some podcast interview where somebody goes on about how much love, harmony, and rock n’ roll the AEW locker room is… I’d think “Yeah, that ain’t gonna last”. But so fucking what. That squash was totally awesome and memorable and a huge storyline milestone for the company. It got applause for the tie up. Obviously I’m All In. Because I trust AEW.

We really need an eye roll emoji on this board.

Why would anyone try Eddie Kingston like that? I am 1000% sure he has watched other men take their last breaths because of something he did to them. I’m not saying he’s killed someone. But I’m also not not saying it.

so the AEW All Out Thread started to go off on a tangent about midcard championships, especially as they pertain to World Championship contendership/rankings etc, and it reminded me of my old bone to pick with WWF/E's 24/7 Championship, and it's predecessor the Hardcore Championship with the 24/7 provision. That prompted me to start having thoughts about the philosophy behind midcard belts in general, especially ones with gimmicky rules. And now I want to talk about that sort of thing but of course I don't want to derail an AEW PPV specific thread with a General Wrestling Discussion topic, so I guess I'll actually start a thread for the first time ever. [here's the link to page 2 of the All Out thread as a primer on the discussion so far] In theory, the WCW/NWA US Champion was automatically #1 contender to the World Champion. In practice, the champion-vs-champion match rarely happened. And it makes sense, because the champ-vs-champ match would keep interfering with whatever storyline the US champion was involved in as a defender, and in the long run that works against the purpose of having a secondary champion in the first place. But of course, from a kayfabe standpoint, the US Champion would have the opposite priority: they should be constantly attempting to leverage their US Championship into a World Championship bout for as long as they have it, with every obliged defense both distracting from this and imperiling it. And this is the general problem with midcard/mid-tier championships, especially the more of them you have at one time: this threat of becoming a poison prize where holding it is more hassle than it's worth. As best exemplified by my pet target, the WWF/E's 24/7 Championship. [The Intercontinental Championship has often been a poison prize in practice, if not in theory, since whoever wins it invariably goes on a humiliating losing streak in non-title bouts that's supposed to build tension and uncertainty for the eventual championship defense but instead foments ambivalence because we keep seeing the champ be a loser throughout his championship run, but that's a complaint for another time.] Okay, the 24/7 Championship. Question: why the hell would anyone want to win it? The special stipulations of its defense establish it as more hassle than it's worth. All it takes is a referee and 3 seconds of normal mortal human frailty on your part. There's no down time and you're never safely "off the clock" from your job: you can get jumped any time, anywhere. At the grocery store, on the toilet, during your own wedding, it doesn't matter. MacBeth has murdered sleep by winning the 24/7 title and MacBeth shall sleep no more until he loses it. After a while, the chance to sleep in peace has to be more than worth losing the belt on purpose. Fuck this, take it, just leave me alone. So there should be some established reward to justify why someone would struggle to retain the 24/7 championship through all that paranoia, or at least immediately jump back into the fray and regain it from the guy who just Small Packaged you at the gas station or whatever. I keep suggesting the idea that whoever holds the 24/7 belt for the most total combined time over a given period should get some sort of booty prize (hence the motivation to beat the guy who just beat you ASAP), the obvious answer being some sort of guaranteed title bout akin to the MITB ladder match. After all, MITB is a similar idea: multi-man matches (battle royales) are traditionally promoted as extra dangerous because of how easily you can get blindsided. Ladder matches are also traditionally promoted as extra dangerous because falling off ladders is dangerous. So a multi-man ladder match is extra extra dangerous, "Career-Threatening" or "Career Shortening". Why would you put yourself at risk like that? Because there's a guaranteed championship bout at stake, and furthermore a chance to make that title bout on your terms and/or in a scenario that favors you. For a wrestler who for whatever kayfabe reason would not, under normal circumstances, ever have a realistic shot at earning a world championship bout (and thus, world champion money) a dark horse or long shot, it's plausible that the risk would be worth the reward. There's no on-camera reason given how a championship subject to a 24/7 defense provision rewards the risk of pursuing it, though there should be. And secondary/mid-card belts or other awards for winning special matches/tournaments often do. It can be as simple as more-than-usual prize money. Often was. Because that works. It's immediately relatable to the audience. [God help ya if it's a trophy, though; that almost inevitably gets broken or stolen to set up your next feud] Special rules and gimmicky defense provisions are also a great way to distinguish mid card belts from the main championship in a way that makes sense and explains why wrestlers involved in those title scenes are "written out" of the World Championship chase (which prevents the problem posed above by the US Champion being an automatic #1 contender). If the rules and restrictions of defense are significantly different, it's thus understandable why a championship/ranking committee would not automatically assume that a given wrestler who is successful in one context is necessarily qualified to contend in another one. I mean, think about it: Tag Team Champions and Light Heavyweight/Cruiserweight Champions never pose this problem: the difference in rules/qualifications between their wrestling and the wrestling under which the world championship is contested is obvious. They are "out of the line of succession" so to speak. But why shouldn't a good US or Intercontinental or TV champion also potentially make a good world champion, particularly since out-of-kayfabe often times the booker/booking staff very much does eventually want that good TV etc champion to be accepted as World Champion, just not quite yet? Thus, in the old days of the weekly one hour television show being mostly squash matches and an extended commercial for the upcoming stadium show super card at The Omni, Madison Square Garden, The Mid-South Coliseum, etc. usually you'd only see the "World" Champion defend once a month at those big stadium shows [if you paid for a ticket to see them] hence the old selectively-remembered provision about the 30-Day Defense Clause. The TV Champion, however, faced completely different obligations. The TV champion would often have to defend on every episode of television, i.e. weekly. Now, the offset to that was because TV was usually only an hour (maybe 90 minutes) and the TV show was subject to its own obligations and limitations due to the time slot, commercial breaks, and in-show promotional spots for that upcoming stadium show [hey look, it's why wrestlers talking shit about each other is called a promo! don't you just love etymology?], the TV Champion would benefit from the "TV Time Limit". Usually 10 minutes, sometimes 15. So the TV champion is obliged to defend his belt much more often than the world champion, but under less strenuous conditions that prevent him ever having to worry about being caught in a 60 minute broadway. The TV championship is thus contested under literally different (albeit similar) wrestling match rules. Which helps justify it's separate existence in the first place. And why the TV champ, like the Tag champs, isn't necessarily entitled to challenge the World Champion. [That last bit has the potential to be a really big problem as a promotion introduces more belts and potentially devalues each one. And it's no coincidence, I think, that as the televised wrestling show and the Pay-Per-View took primacy over the semi-regular super house show at the big arena that "World" Championships became defended more often in TV Wrestling contexts and TV Championships largely became redundant and/or Jobber Belts before ultimately being phased out. If you can see the World Champ on television, who needs a Television champion?] When you adopt a conceit that there is an official Top 10 Ranking (whether you have a Vice-Champion like the US Champ locked into the #1 spot or not) there's extra value in getting more gimmicky with mid-tier championships (or other regular prizes) because this allows you a plausible way to periodically have someone "jump the line" and write yourself out of that corner you wrote yourself into with the public ranking chart in the first place. "Wait, this guy's not the #1 contender. He's not even in the top ten! Either the champ is wasting our time by squashing a guy who's no threat or the ranking chart is totally fake & meaningless! Either way I'm being bullshitted!" This is the [largely untapped] promise of the Royal Rumble ever since it had the guaranteed Wrestlemania Title bout tied to it. It becomes a lottery, and 30 guys have their more-or-less equal chance to hit the jackpot. It's potentially very powerful narratively: the one time all year anyone, no matter how much of an also-ran they usually are, can hop in Cinderella's carriage. Guys who normally have no shot finally get their one and only chance: what will they do? How desperate will the measures they take be? And if they ever actually had a Santino or a Heath Slater capitalize, just once every ten years or so, it'd be phenomenal instead of the academic coronation of one of the 3 or 4 guys who is prestigious enough to be in line for a title bout anyway. Why not just have them ascend to challenger in a normal storyline? But the Royal Rumble, the MITB, the King Of The Ring, the Bunkhouse Stampede, the Casino Battle Royale, and even gimmicky midcard championships allow you to "cheat" your set of rules when you need to break them without weakening them the rest of the time when you want them to matter. I'm so glad other people cited Smoky Mountain's "Beat The Champ Challenge" where the Vice-Champion and presumptive #1 Contender to the big belt was designed to be a short-reign belt with lots of vacancies. The obligatory defenses were finite and, once fulfilled, gave the holder access to the privileges of the distinction (getting to act on that #1 contender status) What under normal circumstances is a bug of locking in your Vice Champ as top challenger to your main champion becomes a feature: the belt isn't cheapened by the lack of long, powerful reigns because it's supposed to be fleeting and have high turnover. If it's going to be presented as a gate way, have it act like one. Okay I think I'm pretty punched out now so, yeah, share your thoughts on midcard/mid-tier championships here. Which ones you like (or hate) and why, what you think they should be, how do you think is the best way to go about making them different from each other to cut down on the feeling that there's too many of them, how many is too many, so on and so on.

Allright! Come on, House of Black! I don't care if Dark Order has been there since the beginning of AEW, House of Black is much better group of wrestlers. I see they are planting the seeds of Hangman coming in with Preston Vance feigning a knee injury! Ah sweet picture in picture! I didn't know how much I missed you until I had to SUFFER through commercials during SMACKDOWN! House of Black are SOOOO much better than the Dark Order but I get the feeling we are getting a Dark Order win to advance the Hangman versus the Elite storyline. Which sucks. House of Black versus the United Empire would completely ROCK but neither are getting any farther. Dark Order vs the Elite is so much less. Miro comes out and distracts the House of Black to allow the Dark Order to win with a roll up! House of Black beat the crap out of Miro! Darby Allin and STING~! show up. As a consolation, the House of Black vs Miro/Sting/Darby will be good. Ryan Nemeth is from CLEVELAND! He THEN MOVED TO A REAL CITY! Wardlow didn't move to a real city! Hey! It's Chris Sabin. Man, the poor Motor City Machine Guns are gonna get JACKED UP by FTR and fricking WARDLOW. Private Party versus Rush and Andrade? Okay, I'm listening. Jericho getting behind Ashton Day is heartwarming. JESUS. That was a NASTY Lariat. That was GNARLY Spinebuster. GNARLY! The Factory actually did something! Awwww, poor Leila Grey. Tay Melo works the busted wrist of Ruby Soho! TAY IS EVIL! Ruby FIRES BACK! Tay fucking CRUSHES her with knee to the head! Tay goes back to the wrist! This match is filled with psychology. Sammy is fucking AWESOME being an annoying little prick. In sweet sweet picture in picture, Tay and Sammy double team Ortiz. Sammy hits a DBS Delayed Vertical Suplex! But Ortiz fight out! I assume the crowd is getting behind Ortiz' STRUGGLE to escape the dickish heel offense of Sammy and Tay! Ruby is great on the apron and she makes the HOT TAG. NICE Backdrop Driver by Soho. Sammy is awesome taking the Poison Rana from Soho! ANGELO PARKER! ANNA JAS! FUCKERY! That was a wreck but that was fun. Claudio and Dustin is awesome. Dustin bumps like he isn't 53 years old. While in picture in picture, Claudio wrenches Dustin's neck. Dustin looks fucking great. FRANKENSTEINER BY DUSTIN! CODE RED FOR TWO! Giant Swing makes nine rotations! GREAT fucking Powerslam by Dustin. Lowblow! European Uppercut by Claudio! FOR THE WIN! That was fun. The main event was good but could have used a little more time. The rest of the episode was kinda slapdash. AEW RULES THE MOTHERFUCKING WORLD!

Oh my God ... HAS TONY SCHIAVONE FINALLY CUT THE SHIT?!?!

Well, now I feel bad for saying Rosa is difficult to work with if she can't feel her fucking legs. Jesus. That reminds of Paige in an interview with Renee a couple weeks before she returned to the ring saying that she wasn't able to turn her head at all in one direction and it cracks and pops to turn it in the other direction. Then a few weeks later at a house show she takes one dropkick and is fucking done. Like, no shit. You're just physically broken. I hope Rosa isn't in the same shape and isn't trying to rush back in a couple months when she should take more time off. Then again, my wife just this week couldn't get up out of bed and could barely walk because her lower back pain was so bad (probably from the new motion of constantly lifting up a newborn in awkward ways for a whole year). She got an x-ray and two of her discs are compressed. So maybe it's something like that and PT will help Rosa out a ton.

Austin is the expressive, charismatic one. Colton is the new Kendall Windham.

"Pro Wrestler, Champion of the Planet, in space" "in a Dystopian Future, pro wrestling is the only solution" "the most 1980s pop culture professional wrestler imaginable"

It wasn't bad. The people around us were very let down by the short title match. Lots of people yelling bullshit around us. The Main was a spot fest and ended with a weird back and forth between Kenny and Osprey. Brit Baker was cheered in our section until the terrible towel came in the ring. Also both teams in the main event were super over. Not sure how it came across on TV but the fact that people went from bullshit to satisfied is a feat in and of itself. I'l probably go to the Toronto and Buffalo shows too as I still don't think you can beat the value AEW brings. Hope you are doing well Infinit!!