Leaderboard

Welp, in addition to not being in the house, my better half has just informed me that it would bum/stress her out too badly to watch the show live tonight while our car situation is ongoing. I'm pretty sure I can parlay this into some crazy sex and getting Spider-Man 2 if I play my cards right, but I'm not gonna be around again til Tuesday probably so I don't get spoiled. Have a great rest of your weekend all

I'm just glad to see Abadon back and winning! Last year this time we got no Abadon for the season, so this is the first time on TV since the Halloween Deathmatch of 2021 with Britt which I loved. Tomorrow night's match with Shida is now being billed as a "Fright Night Fight"! Abadon's AEW Debut on Dark was against Shida and I was a big fan of their first title match on Dynamite in early 2021, so I'm highly looking forward to this one.

Sign on ESPN Gameday today: “Michigan stole my other sign”.

To explain: Kimura has loaded his leg supporter with a metal bar, which was discovered after the match.

The old long hair plus Bandana look that the hair metal guys had, it was smart that they started that when they were young. As they aged, the bandana could gradually expand and completely obfuscate the balding process.

I’m sad to leave All Japan again but I’m excited to return to UWF vs New Japan. As a reader: AJPW - experiencing a prequel to what leads to some of my favorite matches. NJPW - so new to me. Last time we were here it was almost all learning. It’s fun because it lead me to scouting out more and appreciating new (to me) wrestlers.

In 1994 or 95 I think, I went to an All-Star show. The main event was an eight man tag (all of the guys in the match had had singles matches earlier in the show, obviously). Robbie Brookside, Doc Dean and two other guys vs four other guys, one of whom was called Japan's Mean Machine. Threw a very hard Lariat, liked to yell Ask Him when he put holds on. He disappeared off UK shows shortly thereafter. Never thought much more of it for a little while, until I started buying Puro tapes, and there he was in New Japan. He wasn't called Mean Machine any more, he was called Satoshi Kojima now. There was a tiny indie show I went to a year and a half ago, where they'd booked WARHORSE to do the talent seminar/ work the show double shot that the big indie names do. It was in a primary school, drew well under a hundred people. One of whom, randomly, was actual WoS legend Kendo Nagasaki (without his mask). I recognised him, nobody else seemed to. I approached him during intermission, quietly told him I was a big fan, loved his matches and had read his book. He shook my hand. I didn't squeeze at all. Neither did he. Fit Finlay, he has a soft handshake too. But his hands are fucking huge. When he makes a fist, it's like the size of a housebrick.

Back in 2016 when we were doing GWE, there was a question around workrate. Ultimately a match needs to both be coherent and resonant AND physically exciting or compelling to be considered good, but which of the two elements are more important? For me the meaning and consequence need to be there as a bare minimum. Alone, they don’t make the match good, but without them, a match doesn’t clear the bare minimum to be good. I think much of what made Matt’s 2008 ECW work good is still present in his matches even though he’s broken down because that came down to connecting to a crowd and knowing what to do and when to do it, but I don’t think he’s that great or anything. It’s more that when left to their own devices, and despite superior athleticism, guys like Fletcher, and especially Takeshita don’t clear that minimum bar.

I'm about halfway through NXT but just wanted to say Shotzi as Pinhead was incredible. Also love those that had costume vibes to their gear even if it was mainly on the women's side.

So, they just feel like three hours?

Jesus Fuck, I almost forgot that movie existed. Way to pick the good shit, Exec! Also thrilled to see it is on the YouTubes so I can dial that joint up while I am on night duty on Saturday / Sunday.

Aw man I loved Sword and the Sorcerer. That might be the best Albert Pyun movie after Nemesis and Cyborg (and after Sword there's a biiiiiiig drop-off).

Fuck. I will only watch this if Sienna Shaw battles Art the Clown while in Santa's elf cosplay.

The contract signing was a good segment to build more hype for Knight. Him entering as Roman raised the title was great. Santos/Carlito vs. Street Profits was pretty solid. Was kind of so-so on the finish, but it got the job done and helped give more build to Rey/Logan. Shotzi/Chelsea was decent and more even than expected. Felt kind of weird since I have gotten used to Chelsea getting squashed, but she looked alright here. Cena's segment with Heyman & Solo was good. The KO one punch segment was dumb and fun, especially when he leaves to cheerfully tell Noble he did it. Dragon/Cedric was a good match and nice showcase for both men. Bianca's promo was fine. Her coming matches with Bayley and Io not really having any extra stakes did make the promo feel just a pinch hollow. Hopefully Bianca ups her aggressiveness in the coming matches. Knight/Jimmy was good. Continuing to dig Jimmy on his own since he ups his dickishness with the crowd. The post match with Roman's failed attack was another nice boon for Knight. No blow away great matches, but there four done were pretty enjoyable. Jimmy/Knight and Dragon/Cedric were eaisly the best and worth catching. Surprisingly dug Jimmy/Knight the most. The segments were mostly good. Solid show overall.

No ghost runner in extras? Is this even baseball anymore?

Yes, it's gonna be an Xmas movie

It just finished. I walked in on Santana/Ortiz unfortunately. MIKE had on his Latin Kings colors. Nasty looking finish. The women's match was, well, a multi-person match with all that entails, but ABADON WON!!! So I'm happy. Let's hope they don't put them back in mothballs after they lose tomorrow and Halloween happens on Tuesday. There was a spot for them to chop the ref "on accident" when they were all standing in a circle and I was disappointed they didn't do it. Willow is so cheery that the mist only gave her black eyeliner under one eye, heh heh. Why Toni didn't just come out after the opponents and before the bell instead of interrupting the match? Takeshita/Fletcher got a full point as NOAH House Show Main Event. They did a rail ride so I'll count it. The best part was where Fletcher thought they were gonna do a forearm exchange, Lard Lad said "fuck that" and just hauled off and blasted the shit out of Young Kyle. Forearms/elbows were returned to later but they were nice and loud. Each guy threw and ate some murder moves, Takeshita worked default face and won. Fun stuff and once again the winner pleeeeased me... *rubs hands together with sinister glee* As far as the Don Callis stuff, I doubt he gets all these guys that he wants, and he shouldn't. A buddy of mine in Indy had a show last night (he's the vocalist in death metal band Obscene) and he went onstage as Callis with blatantly phony rubber scar on his noggin. If he gives me permission, I'll show you pictures.

Top experiences for me have definitely been taking my kids to shows. Seeing them get so into it was such a special experience. But personally, for great wrestling, two shows stick out. One was Badd Blood, the first Hell in a Cell. We had sixth-row seats right behind the announce table. So, when Michaels had his fall, we had a great view. The other show, I was running camera for. It was the Impact with the Josh Alexander/Mike Bailey epic. It was so cool being on a hard cam for that. Literally had one of the best seats in the house for it. For pure fun, I'd go with Survivor Series 98. Yeah, not a great show, but me and some friends got mighty tanked for it and had a blast. We still talk about that trip. I got to see Hogan at the height of Hulkamania for my first show. I got to see Andre live. I saw Liger at Starcade 96. I saw The Shield debut. I met Flair after an NWA house show. I've been lucky to see some cool stuff.

God, I'm sorry. Nobody should have to go through that. Are you okay? Do you need someone to talk to?

GUNTHER has now hit 500 Days as your Intercontinental Champion. He's now 116 days away from reaching Pedro Morales as the longest reigning IC champ of all time (Morales did this across two reigns.)

Smartass.

Or a Blue Panther mask

Looking at CageMatch, the only times that Piper and Valentine were in the same match after the December 1983 loop of dog collar matches on JCP house shows was in battle royals. Even with how long they were both in the WWF with Piper as a face and Valentine as a heel. But there's a few other WWF heels that never faced Piper. I don't think Honky Tonk Man vs Roddy Piper would have been good but it probably would have been amusing bullshit They did 8 different Dog Collar Matches (that are on CageMatch) post-Starrcade, which seems like an insane thing to do multiple times in a month, much less 5 times in 6 days (December 25th-30th, 1983) So it was probably a perfect pairing to get the matches we got.

KANSAS NUMBER ONE! OKLAHOMA PTOOEY!

Lot of info from Director Takeda https://proresu-today.com/archives/229307/ Post Muto they decided on that they don't want to do too many big matches They didn't know Nakajima wanted to leave until contract renewing and he gave no real reasons why Notable to me is the dojo system could be toned down in the future They strongly prefer amateur wrestlers Jake Lee is on 1 year contract. They want contracted and dojo trained women instead of freelancers, for the GHC Women's title Going foward they will mostly focus on themselves. I'm not sure if they will drop the NJPW/NOAH crossovers. There is more info in the link but I'm not jotnoting it all.

On the last NXT That facial hair... oofta. On the Discord I commented that it looks like a photo of 1998 Mid-Life Crisis Bret Michaels or Vince Neil or somebody. The hair even looks like a wig.

It's on Peacock. Search for Superfan and it comes up.

AEW is picking the worst possible time to add more PPV events when their ticket sales and numbers are on the decline.

I have a vague idea for an Indy wrestling character who’s a huge hipster and changes his entrance music every show to be ahead of the latest music trends.

Cool reading your experiences watching wrestling live. Thanks for sharing everybody.

YAY ABADON! YAY LUTHER! Also re: MJF's situation Max needing to find three partners, although the obvious choice is The Acclaimed, the segment with Joe gave me an idea. Hear me out on this, all three want the same thing from him, a title match, could his three partners possibly be Joe/Omega/Wardlow?

That's why I dug the WrestleMania 39 set so much.

ALSo, Lots of game shows .

Imagine watching this dude Derek Lively in the first two games and thinking Dallas didn't do the right thing in tanking two meaningless games. This dude is awesome. Luka just had the most insane goddamn 4 minutes of basketball that you will see someone have to close this game.

I just went and watched it again on Youtube and a lot of people hate that ending. There was one good comment though: "That saved me 90 minutes" Another person complained "How can you do that to the Dodge?" That, I feel, is a legit gripe.

It's right up there with Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry for an ending you didn't see coming.

https://twitter.com/catherinekelley/status/1718017989318967768

John Nord wrestling the Barbarian in Nord's first Nitro match feels like a bit of an Easter egg reference for a certain group of fans. There's also a Barbarian/Berzerker matchup that aired on Prime Time Wrestling in 1991. Of course this being John Nord, he shows up for a few months, and then retires. Didn't even have the in-ring injury before leaving like Rick Martel did.

Saloum is fucking awesome and currently available on Shudder. If you have a Samsung or Vizio, WatchFree+ just recently added a channel called Scares by Shudder. So far they are just replaying some of the older films the in the Shudder / AMC+ OnDemand queue like Host, Atterados, and previous seasons of Creepshow, but I am hopeful they will eventually work Saloum and more recent movies into the schedule. As for really good Turkish horror movies on the level of Baskin (which is also fucking awesome), I'd recommend the Dabbe franchise (espeecially The Possession and Curse of the Jinn), Semur, and the Siccin franchise. As you probably noticed, most Turkish horror films are of the supernatural good vs. evil persuasion and are mostly just another avenue for Islamic education, but it is cool to see how the Turkish horror film industry incorporates religion into their content without being terribly heavy handed about it. It reminds me a lot of how the Indonesian horror film industry works. It is almost comical how Turkish and Indonesian horror films have just as many tropes as anywhere else. Any character that is not a totally devout Muslim or is too Western in their thinking and attitude is sure to die horribly or get possessed and become the plaything of evil forces.

I can tell you what it wasn't; Wrestlemania 27. The first AEW Dynamite in Atlanta was pretty dope. The energy felt more like a rock concert than a wrestling show. AEW was new enough that everything they did still had that counter culture energy. I am, at heart ,a contrarian, so I loved being amongst my people. The fact that it was an absolute banger of a card also helped. Tag Team battle royal (even though it was won by the Jacksons), Omega/Hangman vs. the Lucha Bros, Jon Moxley vs. Jeff Cobb, and Cody moonsaulting Wardlow off of the steel cage... all dope. Mox came right by our section on his entrance. Everything about that show ruled. The return trip to Atlanta (Gwinnett, but close enough) sucked ass. I shouldn't say that. I got a Punk match and a Danielson match. But Cody was fully on his bullshit by that point and he insisted upon going over Andrade in a street fight. Just nowhere near as fun. I did get to boo Adam Cole, which was great. There was a handful of guys in the next section over who looked like they were gonna post very angrily online when they got home because some guy called Adam Cole "black and gold bitch" in front of them. I won't venture an actual guess as to who on this board I think that was, but we all know I'm thinking it. I'm looking forward to AEW's next trip through here. Honorable mention; Indy Megashow "Come Hell or High Water" here in Atlanta. First time I saw "Stroke Daddy" Starks. I got to see Mil Muertes live, who is a favorite. Met Tony Schiavone. Saw Matt Cross. Thunder Rosa. Hangman Page. Was a good time.

This legit saddened me to read - I really loved their Jane's Addiction sound-alike

Shit, now I want them to pair up one of the youngsters with Flair to do a "My Favorite Year" angle.

Once Ari removes Vince completely, he can be Errol Flynn.

hoo boy. in chronological order. Been to a few more events than this, but nothing particularly noteworthy. 6/15/97. WCW Great American Bash. i didn't go to this event. but my friend had convinced me that his dad was going (it was plausible, as said dad had gone to nWo Souled Out in January) and that we could go with him. so i wore my homemade Macho Man shirt and hung out at/around their house all day. well, by the time 6pm rolled around, i knew we weren't going and i was crushed. i shouldn't have been- this friend is a habitual liar, so it should have been a lesson for me. Instead, he's still one of my best mates, and every event below (save the last two) he was present for. Plus, it was still a good day. 5/25/99. WWF Raw. my first live event, i was 15. took place 2 days after Owen Hart died, but aired on tape delay a week later. the Acolytes won the tag team titles. i believe this was the first appearance of the "Higher Power" in person. of course, he remained hooded, so we didn't know that it was Vince McMahon at the time. 10/19/04. WWF Taboo Tuesday. went with 3 friends. my friends are loud, but i tend to be less so. i remember there was a family behind us where the mom asked me slightly before the show was starting if we were going to be loud and distracting. i remember answering that maybe my friends would, but we wouldn't be rowdy and that i'd be mostly quiet. i should mention that i (and my friends) was a Snitsky defender, so i was possibly a bit animated in my vocalization of his persecution. the mom called me out on it, but it was all in fun. 4/11/05. WWE Raw. i don't remember much about this, except that the marquee outside advertised "Randy Ortoz". i still refer to him as such on occasion. i remember using a camcorder to make a record of this. i wonder if someone still has it? 4/2/06. WrestleMania 22. the most memorable part of this weekend was going to a strip club the night before called "Heavenly Bodies". turns out, it was a bikini bar, so the ladies can only strip down to their bikinis. We were disappointed and ready to leave until we found out that it was "50¢ You Call It" night, so all drinks only cost a half dollar. WELL, let me tell you that we all drank a LOT of alcohol that night. one of my friends BARELY got out of bed the next afternoon/evening to make it to 'Mania. for real, all of us (including him!) thought he would still be too sick, but he made the trip. Also, i remember enjoying the Trish/Mickie James and HHH/Cena matches, the latter of which is noteworthy since i had historically given Cena zero credit. 4/1/07. WrestleMania 23. just one friend with me this time, as it was a longer trek. pretty uneventful, but i remember it for cruising 7- and 8-Mile in Detroit. I made it a point to seek out a White Castle, since i had never been to one. the hotel clerk gave us simple directions, and it went something like this: clerk: so you go down this road, take a right at <whatever> street. you know what a 'Michigan U' is? me: yeah, of course. right at <whatever>. what's next? clerk: <gives the rest of the directions> me: (5 minutes later, in the car with my buddy): what the hell is a 'Michigan U'? i legitimately have no memory of the actual in-ring product whatsoever 9/1/18. All In. front row of the upper deck. this is the event that reinvested me into current wrestling. 4 months before this, i had zero idea who most of these people were, except for what i would glean. mainly from this board. but i started watching BTE. started scouring YouTube for whatever i could see of Kenny Omega and Okada from NJPW. went on a Pentagon Jr. deep dive. I literally can't give this event enough credit for jumpstarting my love. Could not ask for a better crash course. 8/26-27/23. NWA 75. look, i typed out a whole Road Report in the NWA thread, so you'll have to read that yourself.

I never had a video store with a set-up like that. SO much WCW! Most of the places here had the bulk of the WWF big four PPVs but very few WCW videos. I remember taking a road trip with a friend to Vancouver and finding the Spring Stampede VHS (The one with Vader-Boss(man) and Dustin-Buck) and spending way too much for a used video because I not only hadn't seen the show but hadn't even seen the box anywhere before. And it was probably the best wrestling-related purchase I ever made. I probably set a record for the most times renting WM IV from a local video place. Even though none of the matches were good, as a kid nothing excited me more than a wrestling tournament, even one as lackluster as that one. If I'd heard of the G-1, my brain would have exploded.

What an odd way to ask me to change your avi, but hey, I'm just a mere servant around here.

He could do it now, with the help of Papa Shango.