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It is almost certainly the George Bellows painting Dempsey and Firpo.

Personally, I find it a bit unbelievable at times that people make life decisions based on having *healthy* relationships with their parents. *shrug*

This painting was in a history book I had in I believe elementary school, but I’ve never forgotten it and always loved it.

That finish to the main was so odd. Bron's finisher isn't the spear, it's boring you to death by monologuing. Garrison Keilor or whatever his name is seemed almost annoyed by it. "Pin me. Pin me. Pin me."

Aja Kong coming over for Mania week!

Been a really rough few weeks with the depression particularly this Tuesday/Wednesday not helped with technology issues and especially Dad/Laura having loud arguments constantly. Thought I'd have to ring First Response on Wednesday, it was that bad. My body aches with the Cerebral Palsy also. Had a mental health S-H relapse. Dr Jundi, my doctor told me she's pregnant and I'm really chuffed for her. It's going to be different when Dr Jundi goes on leave because I've spoken to her every month since October 2019. Dr Wright from 2011-2019 before she left. I know at some point I'll have to go at it without healthcare help and that makes me nervous. Been seeing Deborah at My Wellbeing College who does a blend of counseling/CBT, the latter I've had to try to jump through hoops to get despite Dr. Gupta/Dr. Wright/Dr. Jundi all say that's what I need. Takes a lot to open up to someone and for the confidant to hear such things. Once something's said, you can't bottle it back up. Depression sucks, a daily battle of the brain. Provisionally signed up to a gym scheme as one is 15 minutes away from my house but I have to have my induction elsewhere as I'm a level 4. I asked if it could be at Shipley explaining I don't travel well with the CP but no. Going to make it clear I'm going to the site of my induction once for that reason. Don't like Megan who I'm assigned to at BEEP either. Disinterested and looks a mixture of Mick Hucknall/Rebekah Brooks I can't unsee. I'll see if I go through with it. I just love, miss, pine my loved ones I've lost. My much missed Mum, my Grandad who was like a second Dad to me, Lisa/GG, my pets particularly all three dogs: Tess, Rayven, Ralfie. Feel like a failure at things as well but that's the depression disease talking. Thanks for reading xxx.

Missed the beginning of the show, went back to watch this. You're right to say it's weird, I'd go farther and say it's a match layout that was uphill in terms of getting the crowd into it. We start out wondering about Kiana and Fallon working together, we get incredulity when Carter slaps Brooks' ass, we get a disconnect when Fallon doesn't work with Kiana in double-teams - the Fallon segments are worked face v face, the Kiana segments are more traditionally heel-face - so we get this weird zone of feeling iffy about KC2 double-teams on a team that we're maybe supposed to be rooting for the unification of? We also have the not-great dynamic of Brooks and Jensen being there, so the tiny good-guy champs are outnumbered, even if B&J didn't do much. And then we kind of feel bad about the actual team losing to the face-heel team when the heel heels and the face doesn't notice. Really mixed-up messaging, would have benefitted from another week of build or a promo segment so we'd know more clearly how Fallon would feel about Kiana cheating to win.

Rewatching "Wakanda Forever" and recognizing the guy who does Odin in God Of War, crossover for the ages!!!

I was convinced it was Ali standing up and Inoki on his back kicking up! wrestling warps one’s brain!!!

“A tag match is just a gimmick match where the gimmick is the tag.” That was a good bit.

I went with Timothy Thatcher Vs Bryan Danielson. Mox Vs Page was also very good as well.

Very cool find

The show was alright. It just felt like the finishes (except for the NA Title and Women's title matches) felt off. Not sure if it was the pacing leading up to the finishes or something else. We're finally getting on the road to Melo/Bron and I can't wait. Also, someone down there has to stop the monologue before the finish trope. Someone, please. For Bron to talk like that and just decide on another spear, why not break out the Steiner Recliner? If you really want to prove your dominance, make him tap.

I would suggest an everyone just skip over Podcast Wars in Dax’s podcast and get to his incredible breakdown of The Revival vs. DIY from Takeover:Brooklyn. Absolutely incredible.

The desire to eat anything, no matter how gross?

We got the dreamers disease

The Bill and Frank episode was the best. I wept buckets. What a tremendous deviation from game canon. This show keeps finding new ways to crush my soul and it is totally great.

Yes. Particularly considering that the top team at CBS should be Kevin Harlan and literally whatever other warm body they choose to pair with Kevin Harlan.

I believe Oil Trough is a real place, but in Arkansas, not Texas (Dutch Mantels worked hometown).

Hammerstone looks a lot like Lex Luger. If you asked him to piss in a cup, the cup would probably melt.

I would not expect anyone to readily recognize the Jack Dempsey getting knocked out of the ring by THE WILD BULL OF THE PAMPAS(!) Luis Firpo painting. That would be unless they were either (1) familiar with Bert Sugar back when he was alive and some of the national boxing writers who were old enough to remember that story or (2) know that Pampero Firpo's name was inspired by Luis Firpo.

Too bad they couldn't just pay Brunson, get better, and avoid this bullshit. Stupid. The real win for the Nets is they never have to think about this headache again.

Every man for himself- GOD AGAINST ALL!

I had hope for a moment. Lewis got back to his feet multiple times, and I thought each time he'd explode out, but nothing. I know it's not easy, but it felt like there were windows to get out and he just didn't have any "go." "Polar Bear is here. Polar Bear is coming." Heavyweight is wild right now. Jones/Gane/Blaydes/Pavlovich/Tuivasa/Spivac/Aspinal/Rozenstruik. I mean you could mix and match those names and have an exciting main event. Maybe one more good Stipe fight. The fact that Ngannou isn't apart of this is fucking criminal.

what in the hell happened to Commander Sahara Spars! this is more bizarre than the entire tag tournament. Her last match was acknowledged, but then she is talked about like a new debuting Amber Rodriguez despite the previous long backstory video we had on Spars. Another new partner for Keta Rush, they worked well together. As do the great heel team of Rhythm & Rockett. Malia/Tiki short and solid, Exile vs. the Tonga Twins next week should be epic. Great main event. Miami Sweet Heat are an awesome team, the Fab 4 make an epic heel stable.

Just finished "American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis" by Adam Hochschild which is about the World War I and post-war period from 1917 to 1920. Including people arrested for opposing the war, arrested for being in various groups, arrested for being in the vicinity of those groups, censorship carried out by the Postmaster General, racial violence and rioting, violence against labor unions, an increasingly invisible President who was either in France trying to exert his will on unimpressed allies, touring the nation for the League of Nations, or post-stroke when Wilson was getting any information he got through his wife, while his Attorney General and an emerging J. Edgar Hoover were trying to run things before running directly into roadblocks. The assortment of people trying to maneuver towards the Presidency through emphasizing deportations all ended up running into the electoral force of Warren G. Harding having the timing of looking like a President before Harding had a fatal heart attack and the country got 5 1/2 years of a President who spawned anecdotes about how little he talked. Fortunately some World War I things didn't get repeated in future wars, like trying to ban people from speaking foreign languages. Of course the whole process of ending that war made things worse in the near-term to put it mildly. I'm sure i'm not noticing some good recent books in the history/history-ish realm but it feels like things are sorta in a lull for maybe a moment or two, eventually Robert Caro will finish the LBJ books in the year 2045 and authors will find some good untapped historical topics in the near future. Or something good will counter the number of Bill O'Reilly "Killing (X)" books that are among the top sellers among history books on Amazon. So that's the last of my Christmas haul of books.

Someone pointed this out to me but with Elimination Chamber being in Canada... can either Uso even work the show? I recall their prior DUIs keeping them out of the country as recently as last year so unless something has changed that seems like it'd limit some of the options for Sami/Roman.

Therexare 2 Savage/Lanny v. RnR tags in Memphis. Both are nuts! James

Latest On Taping Plans For ROH TV Series

This Rampage won't have anything we'll be talking about six months from now but it was a very easy watch.

UPDATE: 1. Samoa Joe vs. Darby Allin, Dynamite (February 1) 2. Jon Moxley vs. Hangman Page, Dynamite (February 1) 3. Bryan Danielson vs. Bandido, Dynamite (January 18) 4. Jon Moxley vs. Hangman Page, Dynamite (January 11) 5. Bryan Danielson & Jon Moxley vs. Top Flight, Rampage (January 8 ) 6. Young Bucks vs. Top Flight, Dynamite (January 18) 7. Bryan Danielson vs. Timothy Thatcher, Dynamite (February 1) 8. Bryan Danielson vs. Konosuke Takeshita, Dynamite (January 11) 9. Darby Allin vs. KUSHIDA, Dynamite (January 18) 10. Mark Briscoe vs. Jay Lethal, Dynamite (January 25)

It's pretty crazy that Raven can say "I wrestled Jumbo Tsuruta".

I really liked Wrath of Man.

I’m a fan of the angle. It gives Danielson a weekly opponent, MJF can have segments continuing the story without it being the standard long in ring promos we’ve seen, and with the hurt arm/shoulder it allows reasonable competitive matches to parallel when he was a dominant heel mowing through the Dark Order. It also makes sense that Danielson’s has to build up his wins for a title shot, I recall him losing a bit. Bryan is a solid name to lose to MJF for his first big defense. Danielson vs Thatcher was right up my alley. The style is very much in what I would point to where I nerd out the most. I’m mesmerized by the Masochist vs Sadist that was Joe vs Darby, Mox vs Hangman’s tough guy story is a great feud, and Muscle Mohawk vs Innocent Cinnabon was an exciting treat. I don’t agree with @LF2 that Dragon-Thatcher was the fourth best of that lineup, but very much respect his opinion. If it gets posted online or there’s a way I can rewatch, I’d love to ramble on these matches in more detail. I want to take a moment to say the @The Natural is often pretty fair in his appreciation of the American Dragon. Because he is very expressive of his love and can be excited to share as much as he can, I feel he can get dismissed as being a fanboy. He has been critical when he felt Danielson’s matches or segments fell short which I respect. Something we don’t see too often online (mostly elsewhere) where people flip out when their favorites are not loved to the same degree. —— On @Greggulator’s Jade thoughts: I was honestly hoping we were going to see an evolution of character after the Nyla feud. A talented, vulnerable, yet still charmingly confident champion. Someone doesn’t need to be a smiling babyface to take on the bad guys. I think a tweener can tween but how this tweening has twun, the tweener tweened wasn’t twed well. Not to fantasy book, but I had a brief moment of excitement for character growth and not sure I’m seeing it. I’m all in favor of the daughter hug, but play with that. I’m even all in favor of Red Velvet going full circle to facing Jade again as a story. But something is off. Maybe ass Greg put it, Jade needs more experienced workers to work with. —— Samoa Joe is so cool.

I think most would agree that Bianca Belair vs. Becky Lynch was a bigger match last year than Charlotte vs. Rhea and that wasn't a main event match for either night. As for the Sami/Cody argument, I can see both sides of it. There's no question that Sami is more over than Cody but it's not that Cody isn't over.. Cody is getting some great reactions. I believe the Sami story was always supposed to be about Owens and the tag titles vs. The Usos, the thing was just done so incredibly well it got even more over organically than they thought. Cody has also been positioned as a top face since he came back, his story about winning the one title Dusty never did was a story that has been building since day one of Cody's return.. So I have to disagree with people who think Triple H has messed something up here.. both stories have been done well and in my eyes both men are deserving of a match with Roman.

The problem of course is that if the Eagles win they won’t stop talking about Mahomes like that They’ll just start also talking about Hurts like that they get us either way just like the bookies do

First time I heard of it was driving on backcountry Ohio roads and seeing farms with signs on the road saying "Cornhole available here" and being EXTREMELY CONFUSED.

Jeff Hardy's breakout year as a singles guy was 2001. During that year, he wrestled over 160 matches. In 2021, Darby Allin wrestled 36 matches. What's gonna keep these guys alive and well isn't just CBD, Tinder instead of the club + Xbox, it's the diminishing returns of the house show market / emergence of revenue streams that don't involve bumping.

If Darby wasn't a pro wrestler, he'd be wrecking his body in other ways. I hope he can live a long and healthy pain-free life, but I'm also glad he chose to entertain us through pro wrestling.

I'm surprised to be in the minority of people who don't really get putting the belt back on Joe just to lose it to Wardlow. Wasn't the whole point of having Joe pin Hobbes to win the belt so that they could get the belt off Wardlow without having to beat him since there's not a lot you can do with him as champ? And hotshotting the belt to Darby in Seattle seemed to really reinforce just how over and underutilized Darby is, usually TK picks up on these things and rolls with them like he did when the Acclaimed and Hayter were both way more over than their push. Unless the plan is for Darby to go after MJF after the Danielson program is over, which I would love to see. If he goes back to midcard treadmill feuds I could see the fans resenting Wardlow as the handpicked guy who supplanted the people's champ Darby.

In Steel City Wrestling, we had a "Lord of the Dance" title that could only be defended in three-way and four-way dance matches. I think Quack was the only holder. I always pushed it on commentary as a "World" title since it was the only one (as far as I know).

BK Rhythm is great, the always reliable opener. Also glad to see Aussie back. Agreed on the trios match, Kandi Krush is always fun to watch. Definite upset in the tag match, was shocked to see that, especially clean. Coach is the best, loving the team with her and Randi. Main event was super short but Leia continues to come off like a big star. Figured Tormenta didn't have a chance coming off another loss, but it was nice while it lasted. Leia & Wrecking Ball were beating the crap out of each other at the end there, should be another great one.

Best short term move with Adam Cole is to have the Kingdom come out to try to buddy up with him and be his new cronies but for him to say he wants to do it alone and come down strong as a face. I get the sense that Bennett and Taven would be good, safe, comfortable initial opponents for him and would cement his alignment turn.

Batista didn't have Cody's HIAC performance, but Batista is Batista and Cody is Cody lol. Only saw the first Rumble and the Black Light Match. Whoever thought that the best way to get Cody over as a babyface ace was by letting him come in at 30 and eliminate a heel who drew number 1 and wrestle 80+ minutes should be fired immediately.

Bittersweet episode, but boy did we ever get some amazing stuff here! Action Andretti (and later Darby) solidified their stance as great wrestlers by hitting poison ranas. Opening tag got a LOT of time, but that's ok, it was exciting. I don't want to see Buddy Matthews losing, but I'll take him losing if that means that I get to see him, period! Great showing by both men, but looks like Samoa Joe is coming to collect. Well, it was good while it lasted, Darby! You made it count. The Family therapy went way better than I expected, but if The Gunns use this as a launching pad into an AEW tag title reign, it has been quite the rise into the contention for them. They beat FTR and talked their way into a title match from there. Quite a feat, that is, IF they actually win the titles. Toni Storm's heel make-up certainly worked. Looked very heelish. With all the talk about Toni's arsenal, all I've got to say about that is, that this is a very literal case of "working with what she's got". Huge win for Ruby, but I was yelling "don't fall for the hurt nose thing, it's a trap!" And it was. C'mon, Ruby. Ok, so Brian Cage couldn't do that much of the exciting flying big man stuff here, so it wasn't terribly exciting, but hey, good enough. He lost, so he tried to at least get the bounty. Thatcher should be great. They are really going balls out here, I couldn't have realistically picked more interesting (for me) opponents for Bryan, if I tried. Main event was emotional and great, with the bittersweet ending of Mark finally getting a win over Lethal with Jay's finisher (a beautiful one at that). The tribute video was heartbreaking, but really nice. Next week and Rampage should both be awesome! Edit: Fogot to say that JungleHook rules and Ethan and Hardy got some good character work in there. Also, DEAN is being quite the trooper providing that much text despite being in the hospital! Let's see others try that! Although, hopefully nobody needs to go to a local medical facility just in order to accomplish that!

I was going to write a navel-gazing post about how, unlike certain of my peers (of a certain age, length of following wrestling, and prolific-ness in being out there), because of my lack of a social media presence and not being a part of the indy scene and not seeking it out due to other aspects of my life, I don't have any real personal one-on-one connections with wrestlers. I wasn't chatting with anyone on Prodigy. I wasn't hanging out in the DVDVR chat room with anyone. There are no DMs for them to be up in. I'm not discussing old French footage with Chris Hero or Ricky Starks or whoever. Yet despite that, because of the nature of the AEW locker room and the amount of interviews done, and how open everyone is, I feel pretty sympathetic towards almost everyone there as human beings. Even the ones I don't care for in ring. I want nothing but good things in life for Adam Cole and Adam Page. I'm not going to say I feel like I know any of them, because I don't, but you hit a certain age and you pay enough attention to human beings and you pick up on things. In this day and age with how out there everyone is, it's hard not to. So that would have been a ten paragraph post and I just shoved it into one. Point being, the post-match at the end of the show was touching, from Sonjay being out there first to hug Jay to Mark getting hugged by Daniels and RUSH, etc., but what got me was the music looping and Joe, who was just, just about to get a hug, leaning in as Mark turned away from him and giving that wry smile of his, since he knew Mark was going to get his pop with "Reach for the Sky Boy" and the two belts and all the emotion, and just Joe sort of living and being present in that moment.

If you're using Hulk Hogan as your baseline, isn't everyone not tan enough?