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JR: Sasslefrass! Danielson does another Yes Chant! Regal: We’ve been training that taunt in the mat room for hours until blood poured out of every hole in our body. Excalibur: And Penta with another Zero Mero! Regal: Good observation, you heated up Rustic Apple Tart!

Yes. The book's been out on CM Punk for 20 years, for anyone who's willing to listen. This is a guy who complained on shoot interviews about people who criticized his work, as if they had no right, then turned around and fixed all the things that were criticized. Intentionally bled during a match into the lap of a fan he didn't like. Threw Adam Pearce into a guardrail so hard it bashed my now-wife's knee, and when he saw that it hurt her, he shrugged his shoulders and did it again. After the gripebomb, some Punk-lovers in another Discord said, "Oh crap Dog, guess you were right about him." Did you think I was fucking making shit up? Yet despite that, I thought his presence in the company (before he relaxed and revealed himself) was an overall positive. Easily the best work of his career, and yes, as @Matt Dsaid, his newfound methodical, thoughtful style (a new trick for him) might have inspired younger guys who aren't as excited about Dragon as Daniel Garcia is. So I'm torn. I don't think good things should happen to bad people, but his work was good and ticket sales have slumped with him gone. It's tough.

An eventual Penta title run would make me so happy. Put him on every night talk show and have a celebrity guest star moment on every sitcom and be the romantic love interest on every soap opera and be court side at every basketball game and AEW would become the leader in not just wrestling but entertainment as a whole.

It feels like Father Time woke up from his nap entering the 2022 season, saw that Brady and Rogers were STILL amongst the best quarterbacks in the league and said "Aw Hell Naw."

On the topic of fun ref mannerisms, the 'manager is ejected' spot is always a favorite of mine and often leads to a huge pop. The point at to build the drama followed by the huge wind up and throw to the back motion, classic.

Bret Hart's the best. Fuck Eric Bischoff/Hulk Hogan.

*starts a "YOU FUCKED UP! YOU FUCKED UP!" chant for Aemond*

No matter the season, no matter the reason, Lions going to Lion And remember fans, you can't spell LOL without Lions.. as long as you take the L twice, which Detroit has taken so many L's they have tons in surplus.

I honestly haven't watched any NFL this year, but knowing hubris has finally caught up to Bom Trady makes me very, very happy.

“What are you kid, a Taunt-off or a Tauntaun?” ”rrrrraaauuggghh”

Taunt-offs are one of my favorite Star Wars creatures.

The style recalibration thing, with Punk's scoop slams getting a big pop and everything, seems like a real wasted opportunity Weird to think that in the last decade NXT had got to the point where wrestlers were getting big reactions from crowds in high profile matches doing spinning heel kicks and belly to belly suplexes as finishers, and now we're at this constant parade of head drops on the apron and whatever else (not that AEW is to blame for that, NXT veered into the OTT maximalist direction post-Gargano-Andrade of its own accord, but AEW has certainly enthusiastically enshrined a lot of the most counterproductive aspects of the modern indie style)

In the 1980s. .

FUCK YEAH! PUT THE BELT ON HIM!

That sounds like something out of Ultimate Surrender Wrestling.. . Settle down .... ?

Everyone should be fired except Chaos Project and the Wingmen. Seven Best of Seven Series’s to crown the new Best of Seven Faction title. Winner gets attacked by the New Horsemen and we get seven more best of sevens. Turns out Bryce Remsberg was a heel lucha ref the whole time. Nullifies the Best of Seven title. Seven Best of Seven Round Robins between the New Horsemen, The Wingmen, and Chaos Project. It writes itself, Tony. Step up.

we got Finlay vs Regal for under 5 minutes in front of a bunch of Orlando tourists on The Main Event two weeks before it was cancelled same episode gave us 3ish minutes of Yuji Nagata vs Greg Valentine

i'm working on a theory that the best rush defense involves having an offense that buries the other team so that they can't run the ball down 20 points

I forgot about Freddie Prinze Jr.'s Promotion. Not much notable names out there he could hire left, maybe CM Punk and Shane McMahon, lulz.

This Packers team is terrible

She was setting up the pounce but Grey was totally out of position so Willow had to scrap it. But I hate the debunked, toxic “alpha” term and it really wouldn’t work for Willow.

James Madison got ranked and promptly lost two straight because of course they did

FULTON = Madman Fulton from Impact?

My favorite variation on this: heel gets headlock on face, pulls face's hair. Face gets headlock, it's clean, but the heel gets away and throws a fit about supposedly having his hair pulled while a befuddled, irritated babyface looks on. Bonus points if the ref then admonishes the face for a non-existent hair pull that he didn't even witness.

Mox vs Penta added to Dynamite.

I might put one of the Doc/Gordy matches on the list also.

This is a goddamn classic (NSFW)

This looks six times better than Rampage. Peter Avalon vs Brandon Cutler! Yesss!

Punk's a thin-skinned baby who hates his mother and put Colt on blast because he can't sympathize with people who would help their family financially Hornswoggle asking Punk for someone's phone number and then Punk replying "YOU USED ME" and severing contact with him is all you need to know - the dude has control issues

So in this promo, one of the things Hangman said is (paraphrasing) that being a champion is not just about what happens when the cameras are on, but what happens when the red light goes off. Whether Hangman "went in to business for himself" with the worker's rights comment, by responding the way he did (even if the press conference was a bit worked), Punk eventually proved Hangman right if you ask me. And maybe a bit more contentious, but Hangman wound up eventually being pretty much right about protecting AEW from Punk, too - in character or not, it wound up being prophetic.

from the pages of The Wrestler (June 1993 issue): Huddy is in the same county as Pikeville, where the Undertaker/Tracy Smothers vs the Gangstas match drew 2000 in April 1995. So Cornette's main success in 1995 probably involved (accidentally?) tapping into the Undertaker fanbase in Eastern Kentucky

We got Punk-Dax singles match in Austin and it was a damn good match building to the dog collar match. We also got the official founding of the Blackpool Combat Club.

Whoa whoa whoa whoa, @The Natural? I had no idea you didn’t like Hulk. ?

Punk’s return was a great trifecta of enjoyment. Great matches, captivating promos, and entertaining storylines. His return segment alone is a top AEW moment and one of my personal favorites in recent wrestling history. His early enthusiasm was contagious and lead to so much more excitement to a product I have fallen in love with. Punk’s storyline of working through ring-rust by struggling against lower and mid card workers was so cool in giving young workers a match with one of their heroes and reasonably allowing them a realistic control segment. Fun Bret Hart nostalgia moments. Punk vs MJF was a top 3 if not best feud in AEW. I really loved the Mox squash. The way everything ended up and potentially was actually behind the scenes is a true shame.

GUNTHER is fucking great!

DOCTOR BOMB!

https://twitter.com/ontotsu_hdpw/status/1583775174674960387?t=4LWMOgQG-QAVvKjeD175DA&s=19 This is awe inspiring. Jesus.

WILLOW! Has there ever been a match with a stranger set of seconds? -RUSH had Jose, your traditional manager figure -Pres10 had a literal child -OC had freaking Danhausen I hope this Nyla/Jade stuff goes on long enough that it reaches to full gear with Nyla taking this to the most absurd lengths. I'm talking Nyla committing literal identify theft on Jade. Hook's definitely coming along. His match with Ange at All Out was the first time we saw him take some offense and there and tonight we got to see him fight from behind for a bit. I really have high hopes for him. And yes, as someone mentioned above, Hooking having to run a Trustbusters gauntlet would have been fun too. RE: Jade having a belt at that event: Nyla responding to TK Nyla forever.

So Rush and 10 pick up OC and try to slam him through a table, but it doesn't break. Rush sets the table up in a standing, "ok this'll break it" position, but instead of putting OC through it like originally intended Rush calls an audible and throws 10 through it instead. This is a pretty spot-on example of why Rush is awesome. He's got the best "floor routine" in the game because he understands how to inject a logical sense of chaos to it all, and he does it on the fly. He'll do a bunch of the same stuff, like he always starts with the cable chokeout spot. But the cable's always in a different location, and different wrestlers react in different ways, so he'll just use that to build and improvise on until you've got tables and guardrails and punches and comeback spots being incorporated into a match flow that feels realistic and earned. I think my current impossible dream match would be Rush vs. any of the Memphis Big Three (Lawler/Dundee/Mantell) in a Loser Leaves Town bloodbath in like, '83. Babyface Dundee maybe.

Acclaimed vs Woods/Nese was good. Woods basically did a GTS at one point. I think I want more throws out of him and less funky knee moves? The announcers completely missed him bumping himself in order to get Gunn ejected. It was a great, clever spot but it feels more Nese-y than Woods-y? You sort of want the smaller guy doing that maybe. Finishing stretch needed one more interesting rotation maybe? Crowd was into them, but not entirely electric or anything. It sounded like an exhausting Dark though. Hook vs Davari's probably Hook's best match yet. It would have been even better if it got another one or two minutes of Davari being in control maybe, but some really clever counters and spots in there towards the end for something ultimately so short. Again, I think they did themselves a disservice by going straight to Davari instead of milking it over a few weeks. Willow vs Grey was not the disaster I was expecting. There were a couple of blown or sloppy things after the commercial break but basically everything leading up to that was pretty good. Grey's shown improvement and I thought she made good use of her time on top. Hogan played her role well. Willow's obviously sympathetic wrestling from underneath. It was funny that Jade said she wasn't leaving the ring and then she immediately left the ring. I do think the whole act got hurt by Velvet going down and the Hathaway thing not working out though. I think this is the match which had the weird absolute silence during the PIP. Cassidy doing Mark Henry's stuff pre-match was classic stuff. Rush interacting with Cassidy is the stuff that makes AEW great. 10 played his part pretty well though he didn't seem to have great control over his offense down the stretch. A couple of near misses on things but it was impressive that he was able to keep control. If you come from 2024 and tell me that Rush was one of the major MVPs of AEW over the last year and a half, I'd believe you. If you tell me that he didn't make it to March 2023, I'd believe that too. This was good, but it also shows that there's no difference between the All-Atlantic belt and the TNT title. It's one of those matches you could have absolutely seen as a TNT title match (like Darby vs Andrade vs Sammy) from earlier in the year. My favorite bit in all of his was 10 having the full nelson locked in but getting so frustrated at Cassidy going for the pockets that he took his eyes off the prize and ate the stundog. Also, I think -1 grew a few inches as 10 seemed smaller than before. I'm very much looking forward to Kingston vs PAC, whenever that happens.

Holy FUDGE!

I'll say it, I miss him. One of my favourite wrestlers showed back up, was wrestling in a way that contrasted and interacted in an interesting way with the house style(s), and was taking part in the most interesting stories and angles in the company's short history. There's plenty of guys on the bench they can call in as needed and I understand why both sides might be compelled to move on, but my interest in AEW is adversely impacted by his absence. Was hoping he'd be out long enough that there'd be a chance for things to blow over. Still kind of hoping. Oh well.