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Cody's neck tattoo begins fading like the McFly kids in the Polaroid as he crumples to the ground

Late to the party but ended up buying a front row ticket to Collision on Stubhub the day before the show. $140.. not too bad. Anyways, I was seated literally right behind Dasha and Doc Sampson. Really fun show. Danielson/Eddie was one of my favorite matches I've ever seen live. Bobby Cruise put over my Gorilla Monsoon shirt. Plus this happened right after we were DESPERATELY OUT OF TIME following Collision...

“Eye guesth yuh guys aren't readeee fuh dat yettt. Butttt yer kids are gunna luv it, daddy.”

TCM's Ben Mankiewicz will be introducing Toni Storm this week on Dynamite. This is something I dreamed up months ago and told RJ City on Bluesky, I can only assume I had some influence on this folks.

Wrong cadence. Imagine you're in a calm forest, yeah. With a soothing breeze blowning, Yeah. CLEARING YOUR MIND! DIG IT!

All I know is I read "Trevor Dame" as "Taylor Dane" the first 3-4 times I saw that and wondered when the singer of 80s classic "Tell It To My Heart" moved over to dirtsheet reporting. Seriously, though, AEW is great. The C2 is cooking. I can't really be arsed to give much of a shit about longtimers complaining about the company changing and "not feeling like the old days" when that shit happens to every successful company. I also can't be bothered to care about bad faith posters gleefully reposting doom and gloom and making cheering for a company's demise their whole personality.

My attempt to put words to Kingston vs Danielson. http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2023/12/aew-five-fingers-of-death-1127-123.html?m=1

We will shoot things in the face in honor of @RUkered

The grand-nephew of the guy who wrote and directed All About Eve is involved in this storyline now? Amazing, I love it.

"Didn't like doing crime" says the guy who disabled satellites during a war at the behest of Putin. Fuck Phony Stark.

A field goal and 4 holding penalties in the end zone by Pittsburgh.

I'm going to Steelers vs Pats on Thursday night! Going to be a defensive struggle with probably a bunch of field goals, but I'm still super excited

Having grown up in the real life version of Vice City, but having been gone for 30 years.... There's such an odd feeling of nostalgia, shame, and fucking pride at seeing what the depiction of "Vice City" looks like in the mid 2020's. I see things in there that I fully recognize (The skyline, the places on the beach, the convenience stores, the open air apartment buildings that the crazy lady is stanidng in front of)... but it's mixed with this whole new set of characters and people who have taken this city and made it their own. I know it's doubtful we'll see Tommy outside of an easter egg, but one can only hope. Overall... I'm just blown away. It looks so fun and insane. I can not wait to see what R* has planned for this story.

Okada going anywhere that would require a move to the United States seems unlikely considering that his wife is Suzuko Mimori. She's not only more famous than he is, but her job isn't as likely to transfer as well to moving out of Japan as his. So I'd say either expect him to stay in New Japan or expect him to be part-time if he goes to an American group.

@Matt D you should pick 25 or 50 of your favorite matches and write them up like this. put it in book form like Roger Eberts The Great Movies

Now I'm imagining meditating to the soothing tones of Macho Man. IMAGINE YOU'RE IN A CALM FOREST WITH A SOOTHING BREEZE BLOWING, CLEARING YOUR MIND OOOOHHHH YEEEEAHHHHHHH DIG IT

Ok, I am not at all 100% but I was good enough to try to run last night. Part of it, to be brutally honest, is that after being my highest weight in around two years, being horrifically sick on the cruise got me back down to closer to where I have been and I want to make some positive out of it and capitalize. No shame. 2/28/87: Fujinami/Mutoh/Takano vs Maeda/Fujiwara/Kido: This wasn't entirely a massacre, but it was kind of close. It's HH. The deal is that Inoki, Fujinami, Koshinaka, Sakaguchi, Kimura all had 1986 to learn how to at least partially hang with the UWF guys and Mutoh and Takano just aren't there yet. They're good enough now to maybe clubber their way on top a bit or to catch a kick (Takanao) or to get one good takedown or reversal (Mutoh) but then they just get swallowed up whole. With Fujiwara, it's a takedown. With Kido, it's a reversal. With Maeda, it's a throw or a kick. Fujinami can hang but that just makes them use their best stuff (like Fujiwara with the head bridge flip out of a crab attempt). So the NJPW guys could get back into it but never hold or press an advantage. Good finishing stretch with Fujinami hitting the ropes like only he (and maybe Bret Hart) can but eating a Maeda spin kick, which brought Mutoh in to get Dragon Suplexed. There still is a big feeling of excitement whenever it's Maeda vs Fujinami.

I understand Zach’s thinking. It’s similar to the college bowl thing but it’s not the same. He’s a young professional football player who’s not a rookie. Just not playing is never the answer for a normal young healthy professional football player who’s not a rookie. He’s going to find that out soon when nobody wants his ass. He’s as dang dumb as Johnny Football, just a little less dramatic. I’m not a Dolphin fan or a fan of that weirdo coach everybody likes but I am a fan of their thinking lately. They’re doing what works and they’re not going to quit doing it until somebody stops it. We’ve talked many times about how not enough of that goes on when you’re supposedly trying to win the game.

That's FEATURE, not a bug. . .lol

Oh my... I just had the thought, Cuba will probably feature somewhat in this game because Miami's history is so intertwined with it. It'll be awesome if R* finally ties the GTA and RDR worlds together by forcing Jason & Lucia to go Guarma for a few missions.

Did... did he just accidentally re-invent professional football?

lol nerd.

Yeah. I love Shin Godzilla but it is a dig at the Japanese government's handling of Fukushima Daishi. It's not a true-to-form Godzilla movie per se. Everyone ran in different directions as far as their analysis of the ending goes, when the real message was blatantly obvious. When it came to dealing with the aftermath of the tsunami and the subsequent nuclear accident, humans were part of the problem, not the solution.

Godzilla Minus One was probably my favorite movie of the year. It's a shockingly amazing movie at a budget of $15 million, far surpassing any American Godzilla movie. It's everything a Godzilla movie should be. I think the franchise really needed this reset. Shin Godzilla is a good movie, and I enjoyed it, don't get me wrong, but it's a political satire. The characters are very goofy at times, and I found Godzilla quite childlike in the film. In Godzilla Minus One, he's just a feral beast. He's pure terror, rage, and horror, and you deeply care about all the film's hero characters. This reset was exactly what the franchise needed since it brought Godzilla back to basics, and it made him scary again.

Drew/Sami was great. The segment leading into it was fun. The action was good. And I really dug the finish with Drew getting vicious. The backstage attack when Smai was recovering from the loss was nice as well. I love Drew's current heel persona. Its easily the best character stuff he has done in WWE. Nia/Shayna built into a solid match. DIY vs. Imperium built into a good match and did a decent job of dragging the crowd into it by the end. Wa snice to see a 2/3 falls match though I'm not sure the stip was warranted for this match. KC Squared vs. Nattie/Tegan had some rough moments, but was decent and made for a nice showcase for the KCs. The Nakamura/Cody segment was solid and had another great vid from Nakamura going over the parallels of their failed stories and why Cody is his target. Creeds vs. Dom/JD was pretty fun and another great showcase for the Creeds. I only wish wish Truth hadn't come out as it felt like his presence served more as a distraction than anything else. I did enjoy Dom putting the Creeds over as legit dangerous to Priest post match. Jey/Seth built into a pretty damn good match and made me think for a short moment or two Jey could actually win. Was pleasantly surprised to see the crowd pretty into the idea as well. Seth was liked here, but the audience was well behind Jey. It surprisingly had a clean finish though it makes a strange kind of sense with Drew's post match murder of both guys. Pretty solid episode with decent segments and most of the matches ranging from solid-good. Drew/Sami and Seth/Jey in particular were standouts and well worth watching. I'm digging much of the general direction for Raw right now. I only hope the inevitable Seth/Punk feud isn't for the World title. Seth's current run has been good, but I kind of would have been good with nearly all of his opponents taking the belt off of him each time.

They better kiss, or what are we even doing here

I know who the Devil is now...dammit I hate spoilers.

If I have to push Nic Cage off the wagon to ensure that he keeps making movies, then I'm going to fucking do it

wonder how things would have worked out in a universe where Hammerstone gets the Wardlow spot of being MJF's muscle and then feuding with MJF

Dude, I am with you. After seeing my weight at the psychiatrist's office today I'm getting on our treadmill in the garage and gonna pull a you by getting a phone clip thingy and watching wrestling, live music, whatever while walking. I've needed to forever anyway so what better time than now.

See? Goddamn Round Robin tournaments

Looool holy fuck I completely forgot about Excalibur beating up Jimmy Havoc. Truly the halcyon days of yore. Alas, the world has moved on.

But don’t you miss the days when people were getting into scraps at Jimmy’s Famous Seafood? Weren’t they magical times where everyone was rowing in the same direction?

You're in for next week. The whole Person > Person > Person thing gets confusing. Anyway @porksweats gave me Orange Cassidy vs Effy. This was from July 2019 and at GCW. From what I gather, Effy was just on the rise in GCW (This was his fifth show and his first singles match). He's a guy who I understand the idea of but I haven't actually seen much in practice. I bet he actually came out of this with some thoughts on how to tweak the act or lean harder and more consistently into it. Cassidy was a few months away from really starting in AEW and he had his own act mostly worked out. It's one of the minor miracles of this decade in wrestling so far that he figured out how to take the act and lean it into a more traditional babyface framework. Wrestling is ultimately symbolic and moves (or to take it a step further, actions) are symbols. You can substitute one thing in for another so long as it has the same narrative value. You just have to control the response accordingly. He was farther along here in figuring it out than even some 2019 matches I've seen out of him. There was more of a sense that it was a mind game as opposed to him just being this weird entity that broke wrestling. In that regard, Effy was even further along that line in some ways, but not nearly as committed from a kayfabe perspective; he broke more because Cassidy was just unyielding. You could hurt him but you couldn't otherwise break him. If he was in a position to have autonomy, he was going to fire up only to give you the weak chop or walk around you just to give you the weak kick. Really, what it took for Effy to ultimately win was to steal the mist, which is one of those spots that you could imagine Adrian Street overcoming Kabuki with in 1984 but otherwise seems sort of hard to imagine at any other point in wrestling history. Even then, Cassidy was able to get the better of Effy again until Effy just managed to show a tiny bit more effort in a key moment, maybe breaking some unwritten accord. This was on the high end of what Indy Orange Cassidy could do and could be but it really highlights how he upped the act in making it more mainstream and streamlined. It's important to reiterate just how unlikely, almost impossible even, it was that he managed to pull it off though without losing anything but cynicism he didn't need in the first place thereby still managing to retain so much of what made it entertaining and special in the first place, all the while jettisoning those bits that would make it disrupt reality on an overall card

I'm an Evan Williams man, myself -- world's greatest cheap bourbon! -- but even I have enough good taste to decline Fireball 100% of the time. What I'm saying is, when a reprobate who drinks bottom shelf bourbon with Coke Zero turns his nose up at your nasty-ass shit, you have a problem.

I'm gonna very politely ask to be shoehorned into this if you're all still rockin' an odd number of participants. I found an old Google doc of good weird matches I had kicking around + I've been throwing darts at Roy Lucier's board again. This would be a healthy way to spend my time.

Being too cheap to pay for a voice impersonator is a PROBLEM.

I am not saying its right or wrong but with Zach Wilson - the belief is, like college players now skipping bowls, he knows he needs to find a new club in the offseason and being hurt when a FA isn't good for business Now, obviously, been known for not wanting to play might be considered not good for business either

How are the Pats going to score 11?

It sucks to travel to Canada and they got a great deal on the building?

Supposedly he both paid off his tax bill and quit sniffing coke a few years back so he might actually have something put away for retirement.

Mom's been watching "The Days", and I keep trying to find a copy of Shin for her to watch for that exact reason.

if this one ends in a tie, Tony needs to have all 3 Continental matches end in time limit draws on Wednesday to spite the viewing public

We'll see what the IRS has to say about that

Only Devil in that pic is Goodell.

Who are these people who saw a shot of (albeit shitty) whiskey for a dollar and thought everything was on the up and up?

One less striker for Fulham in the January transfer window now.

Adam Cole has decided that this is his hair style

It's good to see you talk about all this stuff, Curt, cause no small part of it is dead-on where I'm at right now. Guilt, bad psychiatrists, nasal drip nonsense... I put every aspect of my personal and professional life in the same place. I'm the center and I'm not holding. I let an addiction that I've romanticized (shit, professionalized) and a deeply negative personality define my entire adult life and I've been sitting around clueless how to act on it because all of my emotional resources either drifted away or up-and-left. And this withdrawal stuff is stupid - I don't know how to articulate the physical aspect of it properly. Psychologically is probably worse. Sober, I just stare at walls. Maybe doomscroll. With my baseline of 10 standard drinks then every game on my shelf becomes fun, every longform internet video is insightful, food tastes good, I can text people, at least. I can't regularly watch pro wrestling sober. It's why I dropped the poll I tried to keep running after DEAN passed. I'd skim IMPACT and NJPW on the DVR, indies and lucha on YouTube, figure out which AEW matches I could barely remember, and sort em all up while getting loaded every time. I stopped doing that months ago as an attempt to tone it down but it wasn't enough. To make a long story short last month I ran the biggest bender of my life and blew well past a fifth-a-day, every day for over two weeks. Called out of work. No outside contact. Some people just live like that, and there is no way I want to be that kind of person. But that's where it's been going for over half my life (and I am not that old) so I guess I'll do something about it. A much better set of professionals are in front of me then whatever the fuck I was grasping at over the summer. I have purpose and a plan. But I don't really know how I'm supposed to deal with the boredom, loneliness and anxiety. And the guilt/shame/loathing? I don't have any idea how to overcome it. But we move forward regardless.