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Excuse my language but what the absolute fuck? Sabu randomly showing up and being treated like a huge deal is everything that is great about AEW. If anything the issue isn't that they brought in Sabu to be awesome but that the best thing they can think to do with him is this Adam Cole/Chris Jericho thing. He should be all over Anarchy in the Arena or just in a little insert box doing his pose in the corner of the screen for the whole PPV. I just don't get you at all, man.

Holy shit yes. Sabu randomly popping up onscreen after every crazy spot like the Mortal Kombat TOASTY! guy would rule this and all worlds.

Yes, that is my brother. I have a few Action Park stories from growing up. I only went a few times. Chris went a few more times than I did with his friends (he is a few years younger than me.) 1) I was an altar boy. Our altar boy summer trip was to Action Park. My mom would never let me go because of the rep Action Park had and I was 10 or so. The day after the trip, my friend Davy came back with his arms bandaged. Amy friend Kevin came back on crutches. The reason why — there was this chintzy train ride that took you from one end of the park to the other and — most importantly — over the major state highway that bisects the park. Kevin and Davey were on the train when the conductor told them they had to get off immediately because it was on fire. Flames started jumping from the engine. Kevin rolled his ankle real bad jumping off the train. Davey had some burns on his arms from the now scorching hot metal touching his flesh. 2) They had Warped Tours and big concerts for a while. I went to a Warped Tour there and when I got up to the top of the bunjee jumping platform who was there? All of the members of Fishbone. 3) Action Park was reopened a few years ago for a few summers. We went for Chris’s bachelor party. It was so fucking insane. Their flagship ride requires one to walk all the way to the top of this stupidly high platform where a trap door opens under your feet and sends you plummeting down a water slide. They had another ride that answers the question “What would happen if you were to sit in a tube and slide down a flushing uoside down toilet?” Saw a lifeguard have to rescue a man from drowning after he was propelled into the water from a height of 10 feet in the air. Saw someone intentionally ram the person ahead of them in this weird go-last contraption they have (not the Alpline Slides RIP) and the girl who got rammed saw her flip-flops go flying off, meaning she then had to spend a significant amount of time walking uncomfortably on hot barely paved asphalt looking for her sandals. Great place. My brother is a wrestling fan. Not as big as I am but he keeps up. He had Colt, Sami, Eddie Kingston, Sean Waltman and maybe someone else on different episodes of his TV shows. He read one of my e-fed promos on air to Eddie. He was about to get Roddy Piper on an episode of his TV show hit sadly Roddy passed away before it could happen.

You can’t spell “Undisputed Elite - Adam Cole, Bay Bay and the Backbreaker, Roderick Strong” without the letters “SABU”

Feeling like a huge dumbass because despite knowing Sami was Syrian it hadn't occurred to me that he might also be Muslim. Very cool for him to get to do the Umrah. Mustafa Ali did as well.

I feel the exact opposite - I think the second Taz saw Sabu a switch should have flipped and he should have turned into 1996 Taz that just wanted to kill him. He even could have turned right back into Jovial Taz as soon as Sabu left and apologized, saying he didn’t know what came over him.

Sabu is basically what you would get if the Original Sheik kept in shape and got his fashion sense from Pitbull. It's mind-boggling to think he's 58 now... in my mind he's still 29 and tearing the house down with 2 Cold Scorpio at Hardcore Heaven '94 (first ECW show I ever attended). Makes you wish he'd been smarter about his business over the years. Also, Melissa "Super Genie" Coates on his badge. Good stuff.

Alright show, the highlight for me though was Willow's "AND I WON!!!" She's an absolute treasure.

Not only laughing at this, I can see the late great DEAN saying "DAMNIT, GORDLOW!" as he sometimes did to these posts. Love and miss you, our friend xxx.

Dalton Castle as the third member of Bullet Club Gold would be very special pro wrestling.

Right so here's Jericho vs. Sabu from 1996. Only time they shared a ring.

It’s important everyone knows that Danielson was going on about wrestling bears while on commentary during the commercial break.

Gimme Garcia vs Roddy a dozen more times. Bonus points to Garcia having Strong in the front face lock and stalling to shake his hips in response to the "You can't dance!" chant. Dude gets it. OC is my favorite by a mile but I didn't dig that match. HoB vs Random Awesome Dudes was very fun. Was the "no tag needed/lucha style" thing the Dealer's Choice? Willow rules. Still not sure I'm getting this PPV.

There’s something quite wholesome about TK giving Sabu a couple of nice paydays. Well played sir

I went to a party where everyone came dressed as their favourite vegetable. Not too into the whole "Karen" angle. Dax and Cash seemed to be talking Faster Than Regularly. They were a couple of Fast Talking Rasslers. Anyone else expecting BCC to win AitA to set up B&G? I think they should give Jack Perry a Christmas Creature gimmick. If Jack Perry married Lady Frost, he could be Jack Frost and she could be, uh... Lady Boy. If Wheeler Yuta married Cash Wheeler... If Taya married my old friend Steve Yellowribbon... Debuting the new show in Chicago, eh? I'm legit curious what kind of reaction Punk will get. Presumably a huge hometown pop... But, oh, what glorious schadenfreude if he got booed! Did NOT foresee Sabu coming out. There was almost TOO MUCH good wrestling today. Yowza.

I did not get to that part of the show yet since I was also watching the Survivor finale. I am also not sure if everyone’s age. But for those of you who were not watching wrestling and ECW in the 90s: Seeing Sabu being wheeled out in a Hannibal Lecter mask with Paul E. narrating him as the most homicidal, suicidal and genocidal wrestler while he was doing Assai moonsaults into the crowd and jumping through tables literally reinvented wrestling. Sabu blew everyone’s minds. A lot of smart fans used to criticize Sabu matches because of how much stuff he could blow but all of that to me was besides the point — the guy was chaos in human form. Absolute Mt. Rushmore wrestler and maybe the most underrated wrestler ever because Sabu was probably the first person people traded tapes for and indie wrestling might not even without him,

Oh yeah, just remembered that I loved the HoB finish. Good use of the weird House Rules gimmick. Brody’s hanging choke is one of the best spots in wrestling today.

I had told myself I wouldn't even consider a PS VR2 until Beat Saber came to it And it has a Queen pack... Fuck... Guess I am not paying rent this month

Sabu is a babyface. Babyfaces hate cheaters. The JAS like to cheat. Therefore Sabu hates the JAS.

Pillars Match: the cardinal sin in this feud was not keeping Sammy and MJF together longer as they were pretty funny together and this feud needed fun. They should have done some twists and turns. Have Max and Sammy win the first tag by cheating and through miscommunication from the faces but then have it so that if Darby/Sting and Jungle Boy/Luchasaurus beat them, each would be inserted into the main and Jungle Boy would have to overcome crazy odds and... I don't know. 4 ways are never great matches but they can have a lot of fun character beats and that's what I'm expecting here. FTR vs Triple J: This is all about Mark Briscoe's antics. I'm not sure if it's "PPV-worthy" but it should be great fun. Hayter vs Storm: Feels very weird that after everything, we're back to this match. If Jamie is really hurt, they could have run the six-woman match that they never got to run with some stip behind it ("If the Outcasts win, they get to challenge once a week for Jamie's title whenever they want" or something). If Hayter is healthy, this will obviously be good. Storm's promos and overall character is pretty wonky, but she's been really good in ring. Jade vs Taya: Maybe it would have been better for Taya to earn the ability to use her finisher again. Done a deal where Jade brought in Max the Impaler and Heidi Howitzer and Taya would have to beat them in a gauntlet match without using her finisher to earn it back. Something. Anything. Otherwise, it's just a wonky build. Taya is an opponent that Jade can maybe do 1-2 extra things against given her size/strength and she probably shouldn't be doing those things but she probably really wants to, so this might be more frustrating than anything else. Hopefully Stat's ready to come back. Battle Royal: I like Cassidy as champ. I like AEW battle royals. I like the idea of a joker if there is one. I don't like the pacing of the Blackjack ones all that much otherwise. Hopefully this is full of some goofy interactions and some overlapping stories like the Bullet Club/Starks feud and maybe House of Black/Acclaimed+Gunn and maybe Lee/Swerve, and everyone gets a payday and Cassidy keeps the belt. If they were going to do Cassidy vs Takeshita at Forbidden Door, for instance (which isn't the most interesting use of Cassidy since you'd want him against someone he couldn't wrestle any old Wednesday, buts still..) well, this isn't a bad place to set it up. EDIT: Or just don't have a joker, whatever. Cole vs Jericho: Sabu! That is all. Anarchy in the Arena: Am I going to watch this? I mean, probably. There better be some goofy stuff with Mox's theme. Is Danielson secretly hurt? I get the sense it'll end up as more of a stunt/spot show than unbridled violence. We'll see. It feels a little weird to do it so soon after the Strong/Jericho FCA match. Page/Gunns vs Hardys/Partner: Should be enjoyable to me at least. Should be on the pre-show. I await four months of Matt Hardy owning Ethan Page's contract though I don't get how that works, even with two extra hours of TV, without Dark. it belongs on Dark. Wardlow vs Christian Cage: This should not be a ladder match, but at least you know it's going to be one of those ladder matches that are less about big spots and more about a metallic object being used as a weapon to hurt someone over and over again (probably! There are two other matches like that on this card; this should not be a ladder match!) I don't think Wardlow needs the belt for a big match at All In, for instance whereas it'd be a great place for Christian to put over someone like Pac. Do you really want both Christian and MJF to have titles at the same time. It'd probably make MJF look bush league by comparison. I'd like to see 1-3 pre-show matches along the lines of things we've gotten on past PPVs. It'd be good to have Willow defend against someone on the Bunny/Penelope Ford level. Or Nyla even. You might want to build that last one up a bit. Weirdly, I'm way more into this PPV than the last one. The last one just felt like a lot of rematches and rehashed things, with a main event that was just going to be a lot of work to watch. This has some of that too, but it all just feels weirder to me somehow. Like, if you went back to Grand Slam and told someone the Revolution card, they would have nodded and went "Ok yeah, that all makes sense except for the Orange Cassidy/Danhausen team). You tell them this card and they're much more baffled. This feels more like "my" AEW somehow, good and bad. That said, we're on the road to Forbidden Door, All In, All Out, Collision, the Owen Tournament, etc. and both the exciting things and the crazy, unpredictable, surprising, unexpected match-ups are all ahead of us.

A lot to choose from for Roman Reigns but #1 by far is The Shield vs. The Wyatt Family at WWE Elimination Chamber 2014. A ***** match. One of the best matches ever.

SABU! Lost my shit for one of my all time favs, super unexpected and out of nowhere but super cool. Love it. Enjoyed all the matches. Trios title match was a pretty great five minute sprint. Glad to see Lady Frost get a little bit of time in there. Strong/Garcia ruled of course. Mark Briscoe killed in that seg, loved him just shoving everyone in sight. Lots of solid build for the PPV throughout, which has turned into a really good looking stacked show.

Not trying to defend a quiet crowd, but it’s Vegas at 5pm on a Wednesday. No traveling fans. The Sunday show won’t have a great attendance but there will be traveling hardcore fans and they are already over 7k out of a potential 13.5k. I said it for the last cycle at revolution, but they really need to stop trying 2-3 shows in the same week in the same city until they are way hotter.

Platinum Satnum as a face is basically printing money. He has the heart of David and the body of Goliath.

Great signing.

AITA for sticking a screwdriver in a guy's eye to protect the sanctity of professional wrestling?

They need to have her be on Collision every week defending against all comers. I know it’s Rosa’s show but Willow is a superstar in the making, a natural babyface, and a real talent.

Whoever created OTAs owes me a fucking apology. Every single offseason, I have to hear about what happened not a practice, but prepractice. Who didn't show up for imaginary practice. Who got injured at fake practice. Who stayed late at some shit that was optional in the first place, so now they can't have any more optional practices where you can't actually practice.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE Booker on commentary, he'll mix in some good points and just say some nonsense too. It's probably the closest we'll get to Dusty back on commentary again.

They're dropping two episodes worth of tapings tonight for some reason. On a PPV weekend. I look forward to it but I have no idea when I'll get through it all! I will say this: there are two types of people in this world, those who get excited about the idea of a Claudio vs Serpentico match and those who complain about too much wrestling. I have no time for the second group.

"Main" trailer for Barbie as in somewhat explains what the fuck the movie is going to be about

Made me laugh.

Recency bias maybe but the ending to this year’s Rumble PPV has to be up there. That was the peak of a multi-year deal and was performed and filmed like a Scorsese movie

I know I've mentioned that Juice Robinson and Dalton Castle have the same voice a few times, but when the Ricky Starks promo was interrupted by a mystery attacker, I legit thought it was Castle for a few seconds.

Oh yeah, fair. And the Cody match come to think of it, the ending was garbage but the preceding match was pretty special.

It's a little trickier for me to get a head start due to some cord cutting over here, but this was a go home show with a ton of talking segments so I could hit certain all of those at 2x speed. Fletcher has a ton of upside. He's 24! I've been saying that maybe Cole Karter, if he can develop, might be the guy who wrestles HOOK for the next decade, but no, it's Fletcher. I think where he has some difficulties is in the struggle in the moment. He can visibly give up the moment for the next spot instead of constantly be fighting and jockeying for position. I thought this had a few too many kickouts without rationale. Fletcher did a very good job of showing his frustration and getting exasperated or a little lost from a kayfabe point of view, but I would have wanted him to make some more mistakes after big moves and before going for the pin to protect those bombs, even if it did also put over Cassidy's resilience, of course. Cassidy has one move per match that looks off lately and I think it's not some grand decision but it does play into the fatigue. Here it was the apron DDT. I get the sense sometimes that Khan plays moneyball with AEW signings and that feels the case with Aussie Open. The six man, maybe due to the lucha rules, was a bit more like a series of fun moments than a coherent match. But those moments were, in fact, fun. I have loved the Navarro inverted cloverleaf for years but the angle of it means you need to figure out how to put it on in a way that looks sustainable for more than a few seconds. Usually it'd by really driving the guy's neck into the mat but the lack of rope breaks made it work here. Not a ton to say. I hope we get two dozen of these defenses. I liked Frost vs Valkyrie in spirit (they hit hard), but maybe it had one too many rotations. I think what I would have liked more would have been if Jade's distraction on the ramp let Frost back in it once and then her coming to ringside (which she obviously didn't do) let it happen for a second time. Taya took a lot of this, and she should have, but that may not have made for the most compelling overall match. Fans were still into FTR. We'll see if that lasts. Cole overpromised on his promo. "I'm going to break both of your legs!" He can make up for it a bit if he comes out with enough hate, but that's going to be hard on a card with Anarchy on it and after some of their exchanges in this feud already. Taz being excited for Sabu was really good and I hope he gets some HOOK interaction, if not this time around then eventually. Presuming they aren't adding HOB vs Acclaimed/Gunn to the PPV, it's good they're keeping a few matches (that and a blow off with Starks/White) in their pocket. You can work some of those stories into the battle royal and not overstuff the PPV.

Edward... Don't make me tap the All Billionaires Suck sign again, please

AJ Styles for both guys?

Thank you, Brock.

Someone mentioning how they should've done the lights out gimmick for Sabu's appearance on Dynamite tonight made me think of Dean's reviews whenever it would happen on a WWE show. "Sabu!! The Undertaker! JAKE THE SNAKE~!" And then it would just end up being, like, Edge or some shit.

Mark Briscoe giving The Slap TM to Jarrett was extremely the shit. Normally guest ref angles are pretty bad, but Mark's really nailing it. Really happy to see Aussie Open signed. Hopefully Mark Davis' injury that was alluded to isn't too severe. Also good to see they threw together a video package for Willow. Mercedes getting hurt sucks, but even without working for AEW, she bailed out the shitty writing for the women's division with a massive put over for someone who should be an emerging star. I'm scared for Sabu since he was in bad shape 20 years ago, but it was nice to hear his theme again. Overall, a solid go-home show. The promos hit their mark, and there were some nice showcase matches for guys who will be in clusterfucks at the ppv.

I really hope the Vegas crowds are not as low-energy as they were tonight. It could be the acoustics, but the crowd sounded half asleep and dead most of the night. Not to mention, they will only be about half full in the T-Mobile Arena on Sunday if they are lucky. I'm glad they touched on Aussie Open vacating the tag titles over the weekend and promoted Willow Nightingale's big win over Mercedes Mone. I saw these as positive steps. During Wrestle Kingdom season it's like they utterly forgot that Kenny Omega was in the co-main event and wrestling Ospreay for the US title. Felt like an overall average show, but as the go-home show before a PPV it didn't need to be huge and groundbreaking. Seems like the world title fatal 4-way has turned Sammy Guevara into a soft babyface, which is OK, but it kind of came out of nowhere. Darby's promos have sort of hit home to me that this match should probably just be MJF vs. Darby Allin instead of a Fatal 4-Way, but oh well. I get that Sabu apparently lives in Vegas, but his appearance tonight as an enforcer for Roddy and Adam Cole felt random as hell. Sabu was really the best name they could've come up with? I get if Kyle O'Reilly is still hurt and they couldn't get a return of Bobby Fish for one night only, but I found this development dumb as hell. Sometimes I think Tony Khan makes some really inspirational, effective moves, and other times, he does these fudge brained idiotic things like this. Sabu showing up for this and helping out Cole and Strong is dumb and makes no sense. Getting Juventud Guerrera would've been less head-scratching. Also, just to balance things out with more positivity, Taz is consistently brilliant on commentary. His off-the-cuff jabs and remarks make him like the cool, jovial uncle who happens to be like Jerry Seinfeld or something. Back in the early 00s, when Taz settled into his commentary role on SmackDown, I thought he and Cole were doing some of the best work in his career. Granted, I didn't watch too much of Taz in TNA, but he's been doing consistently great commentary work in AEW. He never oversells anything. He's not a full-on heel announcer, but he will root for some the heels. He doesn't upset the balance of a three-man booth.

Thank you. This has been bugging me. No reason Nana can't manage those guys btw, although I think they might end up in The Bullet Club Experience feat. Jay White.

MJF might be my favorite wrestler these days and I'm not sure how I feel about that...... OC/Fletcher was fun but fell into some indy tropes I had wished we had gotten away from, a top rope michinoku driver kick out especially the way Fletcher spikes dudes with his just.... I get they're trying to put over how tough OC is with how he keeps willing his way through more grueling matches but sometimes something that should be a finish should be a finish or just don't do the damn spot. Speaking of Fletcher, got a little Jimmy Rave vibes off him tonight. Mark Briscoe has been so dope in this program, that Lethal is the one he has the closest connection to but even in this moment its so strained because he sees through his bullshit. Ricky Stars - "What I can do to two men, I can do to twenty men!" Sterling Archer - "So, are we just not doing phrasing anymore?" I know it'd be the SHITTIEST way to end a PPV but wondering if Jack feeds into the darkside and is the one to lay down for MJF. Darby's been on fire for this build up but the reign of terror still has a long way to go. And now, in celebration, some verse, by the Jay's Utsler and Bruce. What is a Juggalo? A hulkamaniac! He powerbombs motherfuckers into thumbtacks! People like him 'til they find out he's unstable, He Sabu'd your momma through a coffee table (Ohhh myyyy God!)

100% agree. I'm with the people who have enjoyed Orange's run, his matches have been great, but don't tell me he's being worn down from all these title defenses and then have him kick out of back-to-back Tombstones and a 2nd rope Michinoku Driver.

Devil's advocate would ponder whether most adult and most mature is necessarily the metric for "best Star Wars show." I fully believe it might be the best show that happens to be set in the Star Wars universe mind you.

Battle of the Shitty Little Boots

He said his prayers and ate his vitamins as well brother.

I forgot to mention the Cody match in my post so thanks for reminding me. I’d also say despite the shit ending that Roman vs Seth from the 2022 Royal Rumble was special.