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You know, it seems to me that AEW lost its way a bit right around the same time Best Friends stopped being featured in feuds that culminate in bad ass TV main events. Go fix that. Heart and soul of the promotion.

HOLY SHIT! MOX vs KONOSUKE TAKESHITA! FUCK YEAH! They go slightly BattlARTS early! Great counter wrestling by Lard Lad. MOX is so fucking GREAT. GREAT FUCKING RANA/DDT by Takeshita followed by a GREAT Tope Con Hilo! Oh man, I got to fit in the International Feed tomorrow as this match goes completely FMW. YES! FUCKING MOX RULES! BLOOD, DADDY! JESUS CHRIST! THAT IS SOME BLOOD! Skinning the Cat into a Lariat! DDT on the APRON! DDT IN THE RING FOR TWO! When will Takeshita start bleeding. Great fucking KING KONG LARIAT! GREAT FUCKING EVEREST BRAINBUSTER FOR TWO! BLUE THUNDER BOMB! This match is fucking AWESOME. EVEREST GERMAN SUPLEX FOR TWO! Konosuke Takeshita goes up BIG for the Death Rider! The crowd is MOLTEN when Takeshita kicks out. THIS IS FUCKING GREAT! BULLDOG CHOKE FOR THE WIN! That was fucking awesome. Postmatch, MOX gets beat on by Hangman Page! Man, MOX did all this while having the flu? MOX is the wrestler of the year. Austin is the wrestling capital of the world. THE BUNNY! RATINGS! HIKARU SHIDA! Probably RATINGS! I love that the sixth biggest Joshi promotion in Japan is getting all this exposure on US TV. Both of these gals got the memo from ATHENA and start laying it in. The Bunny applies an AWESOME looking Tarantula because she makes the Scream Queen face while applying it. Oh man, I can't wait for the International Feed to actually see the Bunny beat the crud out of Shida. The Bunny looks fucking great in this match. Shida hits the Bunny's finisher! OH MAN, METEORA OFF THE APRON LOOKED NASTY! KAORU EXCALIBER by Shida! FOR TWO! Katana for the win! That was good! That was the best the Bunny has looked since IMPACT! Lee Moriarty is SHOWBOATING before Big Bill comes in and kills everybody. Oh man, I so STOKED about FTR vs the Briscoes tomorrow. JANE! Orange Cassidy takes on a dude I saw wrestle once on NXT UK. I'm excited! It's TRENT SEVEN! They are fucking around a lot in this match. The Butcher and the Blade come out and the Best Friends meet then on the ramp! Okay, so they are booking the SHIT out of this. Trent Seven is very much Greg Valentine and that is awesome. NICE Superplex by Seven. Seven is lighting up Cassidy's chest. Nice Tequila Sunrise Suplex by Seven. EMERALD FROZIEN BY SEVEN! Okay, this match is weird and great. Cassidy goes up BIG for Seven's Lariat and it looked fucking GREAT. This match is great. GREAT FUCKING TWISTING PILEDRIVER by SEVEN! This match is fucking awesome. Orange Punch and Beach Break for the win! I assume they are signing Trent Seven. He looked fucking great. What a great epsiode. AEW RULES THE MOTHERFUCKING FUCKING MOTHERFUCKING WORLD!

Man oh man, Takeshita is the five star-est, blue chip-est prospect in wrestling in forever. He’s going to be THE guy for some promotion, somewhere for a real long time. Unreal in there with Mox tonight.

Jesus is a chill guy, it's his followers who cause all the trouble. That pic reminds me of John Prine's "Jesus the Missing Years": On his thirteenth birthday he saw "Rebel without a Cause" He went straight on home and invented Santa Claus

Thoughts- -Dynamite Diamond Battle Royal was a thing. There's some guys I like in here. Dalton Castle is someone I'd never seen before his recent AEW run, and he is wildly entertaining. You dicks never told me about him. The Firm seems like a good heel machine for Jungle Jack to run through, although pairing him with Big Bill seems to be a good way to get him injured. This booking is confusing. Starks should get to stash the title shot in his back pocket and get to just go for the ring next week. That way he can beat MJF but MJF can keep the title. MJF isn't a dominant heel, he's a sneaky one, and losing to Starks when the title isn't on the line wouldn't hurt him at all. Anyway, this promo segment absolutely ruled. MJF gave his usual schtick, and then Ricky by God Starks completely outclassed him, though I got the sense MJF held back a bit. The way I howled when he told MJF "you smell like paint thinner and ass!" Starks lost focus a bit toward the end, but that last bit about relieving him of responsibility was pretty great. Again, the only problem is that there's no way Starks is winning this match, though he might should. -It's crazy to me how much the purple hat deal has re-invigorated Jake Hager. It's like this whole time we've been watching Carrot Top before he started using props. Really fun match here. -There's a lot of buzz about Saraya's partner being TAFKA Sasha Banks. That would be the biggest shot across WWE's bow AEW has taken since... well, since ever, really. Since Danielson at minimum. She's one of the few stars out there who will draw eyes (though for the life of me I still can't figure out why), and a couple of fairly reputable news aggregators have said they've been told by sources in the company that there's a reason this match is being announced so far in advance. I liked Hayter's tone and intensity in this interview. Should be a heck of a fight. -Also, Jade Cargill is awesome. It's good to see Red Velvet (for a few reasons), and Skye Blue really is getting better. Again, at some point you've gotta figure out who is going to take the title off Jade, and it seems risky to bank on Statlander being able to stay healthy for any prolonged period of time. -The BCC thing was fine. If Regal's leaving then this is as good a way to explain it as anything else. I enjoyed Billy Reegs doing his best "Randy in Scream 3" here. Kept waiting for William to explain the rules of a horror trilogy. -This main event was fire. I've seen a lot of people say they think TK has fumbled the bag with FTR. That FTR may end up leaving if they don't win the AEW Tag titles. First of all, those guys don't strike me as big belt marks. They have a lot of belts, but that seems to be more to facilitate their current characters. FTR left WWE because they didn't feel like WWE took tag wrestling seriously. This match was serious tag team wrestling. Anthony Bowens is probably #4 on my current "wrestler of 2022" list (Mox, Dax, Yuta). This is the kind of stuff these guys say they want to do. What's more akin to "Serious tag team wrestling;" stuff like this, or endless feuds with Hit Row, The Viking Raiders, Otis & Gable, etc? Not to mention, FTR isn't gonna give up those lucrative indy one-offs and dates in Mexico and Japan. FTR is AEW, and Wednesday night they reminded us why. TK just needs to keep having shows like this. The number will grow.

Austin is the wrestling capital of the world.

SEVEN on Seven Violence! Yesterday I had NO IDEA Trent Seven even existed. Now I am STOKED for a potential Orange & Dustin vs Trent Seven & Kip match. Amazing. Dude has a great bulky and hairy old school heel look, hits hard, can play along with Orange's shtick without looking a fool, and has Octopus-level facial hair. Looks like Mox & Takeshita saw Speedball vs Alexander and decided they weren't going to let Impact steal DEAN's poll this week! Wait! Hook has already been around for A YEAR?!?! EVERY TIME Moriarty's music plays I think it's gonna be Magical Girl. Markhausen made me lol. JEFF COBB on Final Battle! Yeah!! Such an exciting hour! Also: NICE KOBASHI T-SHIRT THERE, EDDIE KINGSTON!

See what happened is Ari Davari had 50K that he was going to give some guy if he helped them win, but they lost and Matt Hardy took the money and then used it to pay his fine for using the Twist of Fate, but Davari was mad later and Ethan Page let him use the Twist of Fate whenever he wanted, but that wasn't good enough as he still wanted his money back so he went to Mark Sterling and Mark Sterling offered him the Varsity Athletes to help him even though he has a Brock Lesnar looking dude in his employ just hanging about doing nothing and now they have to heat them up as a unit so they can face Hardy Party later and...

The report in question, unless I'm mistaken, refers to Dax Harwood's interview with Fightful where he suggested that they may 'Take a year off, maybe'. He sounds to me like he's spitballing ideas for the sake of the interview. https://youtu.be/8gn0bKSb04M?t=973 Both Dax and Cash also said or wrote that their great 2022 would mean nothing if they didn't beat the Acclaimed. A match they pretty likely (er certainly) knew the finish of. Dax is rarely without his working boots when holding a mic. I'm gonna make a wild prediction and say they're both very happy with where they're at and that they, FTR, will be featured on either AEW or ROH TV well passed April. All that said, very excited for a potential Briscoes win.

While I'd be in total agreeance with you 9.5 times out of 10 on a normal episode, it's TAKESHITA TIME, MY BROTHER. No way those dudes don't run away with it.

And your winner IS Dax Harwood vs Bryan Danielson- DYNAMITE! Second place is: Ricochet vs Santo Escobar- SMACKDOWN Deonna Purrazzo vs Mickie James- IMPACT! Will Ospreay vs Tetsuya Naito- New Japan on AXS Kenny Omega/ Matt Jackson/ Nick Jackson vs Penta El Zero Miedo/ Rey Fenix/ PAC- DYNAMITE Samoa Joe vs AR Fox- DYNAMITE Alan Angels vs Danny Limelight- CWFH Hiroshi Tanahashi/ Toru Yano/ Kosei Fujita/ Ryohei Oiwa vs Aaron Henare/ Great-O-Khan/ Kyle Fletcher/ Mark Davis- New Japan World The OC vs TheJudgement Day- RAW Maki Ito/ Emi Sakura vs Nyla Rose/ Marina Shafir- AEW Elevation Angelico vs Hagane Shinno- AEW Dark

And what's Croat for TAKE THAT MOTHERFUCKER

IMPACT! is posting the Josh Alexander/Speedball Mike Bailey match tomorrow at noon. That match fucking blows everything else away.,

OH HELL YEAH!

Oh FUCK YEAH!

Jesus H. Fuck, did Moxley take an actual chisel to his scalp in this? It looks like there is a chunk out of his head. Really strong finish with a lot of great crowd response out of a logy beginning (take in mind Mox was ill with who knows). Moxley was especially smart in switching his grip on the sleeper so Takeshita could perform the Blue Thunder Bomb properly. Lard Lad is your new Kobashi. Bet. From the Discord: If anyone has a photo of that, post it. Bunny's circa 1970 Alice Cooper eye makeup was also awesome. That was maybe the best Shida match so far, despite opposite views. BIG BILL had a fun squash (yeah dude, show some personality!) and then we were intrigued by the promise of POWER SLAP. Does Dana White need coke money? Do they test for CTE possibilities and then put the worst guys together? Is there a Rick James Award? WHAT IS THIS?! Tune in to find out. Trent Seven was a good player in the Orange "fun and totally different wrestler to fight" deal but he was maybe the least of all the surprise contenders in AEW so far, better than poor Mance Warner and Jeff Cobb but pretty low on the scale. He still lit up Orange's chest something fierce. I miss Miro. Anyway, good show.

Here’s some Athena/Mercedes history to prep you. They really take it to each other here:

I knew Astro's Playroom was a good game but none of you told me how hard the soundtrack slaps

I'm actively excited for Mox vs Takeshita II. Considering I am the board low voter on Takeshita, that should tell you guys something.

Apparently one of the markets that got hit really bad by the Spectrum Cable outage was Buffalo, during a Sabres game where their young breakout star put up four goals in the first period. So yeah those numbers are just weird weird and aren't the best to go on.

This fucking game was wild.

I never actually finished writing up the show. I enjoyed the trios but Grey struggled during the commercial break figuring out when to give Skye hope spots, and some of that might have just been Hogan being TOO good at working the apron. She was keeping the fans clapping there. The apron bit was awesome. Velvet improved a lot in the first half of 2022. I like how she just disappeared into it, slinking down into nothing. Pretty clever layout in keeping Hogan and Jade mostly out of it and then just teasing that instead of paying it off. I do think Grey's getting better in general, but it's a process. Main was great. It feels like a blur now. Some amazing near falls but it also didn't break down too early. Obviously we want them to run it back with FTR as full heels. I don't know what FTR will do but they've had a great year and they'd have a great 2023 if they stuck around as heels and feuded with Top Flight, Private Party, BCC, and the Acclaimed.

Farewell Tour (for the) Revival

I think so. Nothing is gonna follow that.

In the span of a month, Josh McDaniels has lost games to a team whose coach was an ESPN analyst six days before the game and a team whose quarterback was with a different team two days before the game. And somehow managed to win three straight in between those two games.

It looked like this but with Danhausen as the word.

Cobb vs Dorada sounds special.

Verb. That's what's happenin'.

Giant wads of AEW tomorrow, including a special episode of Elevation. It's strange that Vertvixen is on this since she is on WOW regularly. And Madi is pushed in NWA. Tag Team Match The Kingdom (Matt Taven & Mike Bennett) (w/Maria Kanellis) vs. Ativalu & Sal Muscott Singles Match Athena vs. Madi Wrenkowski Tag Team Match Top Flight (Dante Martin & Darius Martin) vs. The Factory (Aaron Solo & Nick Comoroto) Singles Match Hagane Shinno vs. Juice Robinson Singles Match Emi Sakura vs. Dani B Tag Team Match Fly Def (Warren Johnson & Zack Mason) vs. The Jericho Appreciation Society (Angelo Parker & Matt Menard) Tag Team Match Zack Clayton & Zane Valero vs. Best Friends (Chuck Taylor & Trent Beretta) Singles Match Willow Nightingale vs. Vertvixen Six Man Tag Team Match Brandon Cutler & Chaos Project (Luther & Serpentico) vs. Ari Daivari & The Varsity Athletes (Josh Woods & Tony Nese) (w/Mark Sterling)

Nah dawg, I'm triple vaxed and fully believe in Covid and it's dangers. But the flu is still a thing. Not every sickness can just be assumed to be Covid to fit your hate boner narrative for anything and everything AEW. This is me taking a leap but I would assume and hope the majority of the roster has been vaccinated with their heavy touring schedule and interaction with all kinds of strangers in a given week. Covid is always a possibility, but that shouldn't be the automatic assumption.

You touched on exactly why I think this is the perfect place for a Briscoes win (and I'm sorry to keep harping on this point, because I know I mentioned it earlier to Natural) but if this is where we find out about ROH streaming/TV, then this is (regardless of the 'right' booking necessitating it in this third bout) where the titles go on the full-time, ROH 'originals' in The Briscoes, and FTR (after dropping the IWGP HWs and the AAAs, and taking a nice vacation and/ or tour of the indies and/or overseas)returns to AEW TV refreshed and continues seeking the AEW titles against whoever it may be by then, or maybe they add one of their allies like Wardlow or someone and go after the trios titles as a fun diversion (and a nice, easy dip of the toes back into the AEW pool after having been off for a bit).

Yeah I'm in. I've leved up over the pandemic and I'm watching absolutely everything like I'm 16 again. I have an IWTV sub I don't use enough fwiw. EDIT/ADDITION: I have a big blind spot from 2007 to 2015 in the non-WWE or NJPW world. I don't watch enough Florida, or lucharesu, or Moxley-era CZW or post-Misawa NOAH or turn-of-the-millennium lucha or ROH when Nigel was on top or GWF or deathmatches after 2010 or recent AJPW or whatever months Waltman was in WCW or T2P after the debut show or uuuhhh y'know I probably DO watch enough I just want to watch everything.

I think FIFA's bookers need Messi back in the Finals.

Friday Reflections: Just watched the entire 59:45 match and it rules just as much the second time. I loved that IMPACT! COMMENTARIAT were plugged in to the parts that were during the commercial break. Being the best in the entire world, it was seamless. Man, Josh Alexander wrestling hard-edged is the fucking best. I love that he kept the Ankle Lock on for the entire four count after Speedball makes the ropes. I heard an interview with Alexander earlier this week and he said the reason he didn't jump to AEW was mainly because he said that only the top 20% get to wrestle in real wrestling matches. This was better than his other hour long match- that great match against TJ Perkins back when he was X-Division champion. Speedball Bailey is fucking GREAT. His selling in this match was a key to its success, so to pass him off as some kind of spot monkey is very incorrect. The main problem with Josh Alexander in IMPACT! is that he doesn't quite have enough opponents- he's got Eddie Edwards, a couple of guys they can borrow from New Japan and Speedball. Maybe Steve Maclin and Black Taurus. Nothing else matches his level (Rich Swann, Trey Miguel). AEW should send Konosuke Takeshita in to invade just so Alexander can go 60 minutes with him. Man, what a match.

The one thing I really found fascinating is the evolution of The Horsemen gimmick. At the beginning, they were just like a gang of "cousins" (Ole, Arn, Ric) and their buddies, JJ and Tully, that got together to fuck with Dusty and his friends. They were more of a rougher gang IMO. Jumping Dusty in the cage, the famous arm breaking angle, jumping MOrton in the dressing room, etc. Then when Ole left, the group evolved more into the "Symbol of Excellence" playboy, "we're richer and better than you", "Greed is Good" mentality that defined the 80s.

I think this week's show has a ton of potential to be great. Shida/Bunny may steal it.

So Kairi (look, I love Tam, but she isn't winning that match)

Only good thing Miami has ever done

The WON HOF 2022 inductees are...

Can't see Briscoes going 0-3 vs. #FTR. Briscoes also had a visual pinfall on #FTR in the second match when the referee was out. Briscoes regain the ROH World Tag Team Titles.

I was there live for it, so it may be coloring my opinion, but I agree with Dean. It's must-watch.

Jeff Jarrett in WWF and TripleHHH on top are both major players in my "Sweet Jeebus I watched it once I don't think I should have to watch it ever again in any incarnation" category, but I maintain respect for JJ because he talked his way into a push and those paydays, and Helmsley booked himself to cosplay his heroes and made us listen to all... that... talking...

See you again.