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When Jungle Boy returns he should come out to Cult of Personality

Over the next couple of months Hayter, Thunder Rosa, Deeb, and Tay (and maybe Ford) all likely come back. The division needs an influx.

There have been at least three people from here or SC or PWO who have made it out to Osaka for drinks and wrestling and it was ALWAYS a GREAT time. Ohtani's Jacket, who helped me out with advice when I was moving here, The Cobra 2, who has become one of my closest friends in real life, and Dangerous A, who co-wrote the EXCELLENT Scott Norton book and who came over with the Osaka Holiday Paradise crew. I am probably forgetting somebody obvious, too. There have been a LOT of wrestling/drinking parties over the past 14 years. Of course it's fun to hang out and talk wrestling, etc, with fellow wrestling nerds. But,so far, it's always been even more fun than you'd imagine. And so far my Japanese wrestling friends have always gotten along with and enjoyed meeting my gaijin wrestling friends. And I'd love to keep that streak going. I imagine we'd have a great time, Infinit. Really, if anyone who can drink without being a dick makes it out to Osaka/Kyoto/Nara and wants to hang, send me a pm. Preferably well ahead of time. (If you don't drink, wrestling and food might still be do-able). Sadly, Osaka Pro no longer runs daily shows, so there's no guarantee... There are shows almost every day in Tokyo, but it's generally too far and too expensive for me. Will probably head there for a G1 final or Dome or Budokan show one day. And a Korakuen show is 100% on my bucket list. Anyway, the invitation is open, and sincere. (at Bodybar with Cobra 2) Japanese style Chinese food might be my single favourite genre of food. Generally it's not deep fried, and generally there are no gloopy gloppy sauces. Though, the two pictures I posted are of deep fried chicken and tofu in gloppy spicy sauce The spice is a lot milder than "real" Chinese food, and the dishes are lighter than American style. The sauces are never overly sugary. Fried gyoza (potstickers/dumplings) fried rice, shrimp in (mild) chili sauce, tan tan men (spicy sesame taste noodle soup) and shredded beef with green peppers and onions are all mainstays. And I was REALLY happy they had that shirt in my size. Might be fun to go to Oshyo Gyoza or Kemuri and Flower one day with a DVDVR crew!

Yota Tsuji, who is king of the world and everything. Ren Narita, who is ready to rise up out of his mini-Shibata role and *god help me if they fuck him up offa this House of Torture shit*. Yuya Uemura, who had a damn fine run in the states. I would by far put Shota Umino at the bottom of those ranks but that might just be me. Obviously there's a lot of in-house gaijin on the come-up. I still have no idea how WAR DOGS Bullet Club is gonna break, outside of It Ain't Finlay. I'm glad I watched some Tag League shows cause yknow who's really putting it together? Hikuleo. He's being asked to do more and he's doing it. Speaking of NOAH, the best pure Young Lion I've seen in awhile is Ryohei Oiwa and he's doing his excursion as Kiyomia's understudy under the green lights. Very much one to keep an eye one.

Good job everyone. Here's Week 2. @The Natural Matt D --- @Curt McGirt @brynn9292 --- @porksweats @Zimbra --- @Casey @Gordi the former AEW fan --- @Sammo~! >>> @John E. Dynamite >>> @HeadCheese (Which means that HeadCheese gives a match to Sammo~!). John joined in and we ended up with an odd number anyway, but hey, the more the merrier. Paul, got a match in mind for you later today.

All criticisms and nitpicks aside, enjoyable show tonight. The Continental Classic tournament continues to be a good showcase. I like the whole vibe of the tournament so far and the post-match interviews where you have the guys stewing in their losses or Danielson acting quietly intense while meditating. Nice touch on that Wardlow/Willie Mack match with having Wardlow walk away after that filthy powerbomb and not even waiting for the ring announcement. It was like the wrestling equivalent of a Mark Hunt walkoff KO. I hope Wardlow is getting back on track here and he's put on the path of Joe or MJF next.

He should be a Gentleman. "Real Class" Jack Perry.

I love the Opening Promo Montage, but a mixed bag on the quick promos this week. 'One of the biggest Canadian showdowns in history' says Ethan Page. Hmmm? One of the better 'Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting' opening vids. Kingston v Castagnoli was so good. That's how you do a worthwhile flash pin finish. I like that they keep flirting with a draw, but have yet to do one. Moxley Promo was solid. Hook/Yuta promo was fine. Yuta's come along on the mic, but let's get him a breathing coach. Willow v Mercedes was a fun TV bout. Mercedes is such a good hard nosed heel. Weak finish there, but it's nice to see Willow get back on the winning track. Judging by the recent crowds, she's clearly been hurt by the lackadaisical booking. The Stat save coming from the other side, and with music, was so illogical. Let me get this straight, she was hanging out on the other side of the arena just waiting, knowing the heels would attack? If so why did it take her so long? Curious how she signaled to the truck to play her music? Hager/Menard/Parker promo was good. Filtering in some arena sound under these pre-tapes in post might be something to consider. Swerve promo was fine if a bit silly. A good writer to help with bullet points would be a real help. Wardlow v Mack was pretty good until the rotten finish. The ref stoppage gimmick, as in this case (and most), always comes off so awkward. Why bother? Just put a foot on the chest and count the three for 'crying out loud'. Complaints aside, I like Wardy working competitive squashes as opposed to quick meaningless local talent squashes. He does some impressive stuff made all the more impressive against a big Mack truck like Willie. Kenny Omega v Ethan Page was a terrific TV bout. Kenny is poetry in motion. Page's cut off cutter was excellent. Page looked good here. I was excited for this match, but it's a bit of a headscratcher while selling Page v Nese on the ROHPPV as something significant. Nice Big Boot from Big Bill. CJ Perry/Miro promo was ridiculous and tone deaf. Kommander/Penta v Mendard/Parker was pretty solid. Nice reaction for the Quebecers. Keith Lee/Shane Taylor video was alright. Very interested to see how that one plays out. Danielson v Andrade was nasty fun. Andrade's fall fashions are hilariously awful. Kind of an 'American Males' look there. Not a big fan of the finish. I really like Andrade's work, but I don't see much of a point having a WWE bound midcarder going over Danielson. Looking forward to Claudio v Andrade. Might be of assistance to the audience to announce some matches for next week, no? Still, alotta fun was had over the course of this 120 minutes.

Taking one? Aloha Arn

FWIW, for that particular project, I ended up settling on doing a variation of just that: a third national TV promotion based out of NYC/the northeastern US named Empire Ring Alliance (E.R.A.) I was smugly proud of myself for that backronym (despite its unoriginality, with Empire Wrestling Federation being both a CA indy and a fictional promotion from the THQ games). I wanted to try to somehow monetize it on a stream or something, but I thought I might have trouble trademarking it. @Gordi the former AEW fanI have still yet to fly on a plane in my life but if I'm ever able to get a month off work to hop on a freighter, I promise to buy you a round up in the cheap seats at the Dome. Great pics as always man

The problem is that Miro is DEFINITELY the heel in this situation now. Jealous husband who wants the woman to stay at home and clean instead of having her own social life and career is not a face.

And it’s not that division was the early 80s AL East, with Baltimore, Toronto and Detroit, where you could win 100 games and miss the playoffs.

- Eddie looked more like a zombie here than he did with the gas can; you could just not put the fucker down. Rollup is a passable finish I guess. The ladies steal it (and basically the entire match structure: heel beats and beats on face until fluke pinfall) later on. - Omega/Page was passable. I think Page had a better match with somebody I can't recall back during the pandemic. Omega definitely has a different gear than other wrestlers and here it really showed. Still, the crowd loved it and Ethan got a moment in the spotlight. They also ate up the tag match. Loved the "Daddy Magic" chant that stopped Penta in his tracks. - Miro's new role as sexist asshole husband is just woooonderful. Yuck. Whoever's idea that was needs to be spanked. - The American Clamdigger (TM Nigel) is indeed certifiable. Not only did they cut the eyebrow, not only did he bust his nose, not only did they work the eye but they tossed the patch entirely and he threw headbutts! Now I know these guys are professionals and they know what they can and can't do but one slip-up could fuck him up worse than he thinks the risk is. The end with Andrade going completely HAM on him and wrecking his shit was definitely the way to make Bryan drop a fall. You forget that Andrade, like some of the other guys, has three finishers too: the figure eight, the back elbow, and the DDT. While not as good as the Garcia match it's pretty apples to oranges as Dragon had to work off his back foot the entire time.

@Curt McGirt I’m good with independent stuff, WWF/E (plus anything on the Network), Impact, ROH, etc. Lucha and Japan stuff (as long as it’s in YouTube) is something that’s a bit of a blind spot for me. @Sammo~! I’ve been sick as hell the past few days with strep throat but starting to feel better so I will get to the match you sent me either tonight or tomorrow.

I love Mark Briscoe, and will endorse a proper slapping for near anyone in Stamford at any time, but I always figured they got it from the Boyz N Da Hood song

I always thought Johnny B. Badd's was great, especially considering the difficulty level of doing it from the top.

Heres a comment that doesn't warrant a thread if there ever were one: I'm killing time before the games and WOW is on local TV - the ring announcer (Lauren, but I didn't catch her last name) is one of the most beautiful humans I've ever seen, but her delivery sounds like "It's Raining Men" karaoke. "From the Booooooooard of Edu-CAY-tion, the CLASSMASTERRRRR." It's gotta be heard to be believed. No AJ on commentary yet this week btw in case anyone cares

Jamie Hayter is the standout. You're right, the division needs an influx and much better booking. Thunder Rosa: https://www.f4wonline.com/news/aew/aews-thunder-rosa-i-am-ready-to-return

They desperately need Hayter back for sure.

Danielson is a psycho. He’s making sure this is his last year wrestling at this pace. Andrade ostensibly being a face now while doing a ton of heel stuff, and then trying to be a face afterwards checking on Brian was weird. Also, weren’t Rampage and Collision taped the same day? Did Brian wrestle two matches? Eddie-Claudio was great, I was a little drunk watching it last night and got totally sucked in to it. Again, the storytelling going on in this tournament is aces. Willow-Mercedes was very good but they made the mistake of basically having the exact same finish as the match before. Kenny-Ethan Page was one of those Kenny matches he gets critiqued for by some where there really isn’t any “heart” or heft to it, just “we are going to wrestle a match with a lot of moves and reversals that will get highly rated”. I couldn’t get into it, other than the perfect timing on Ethan’s first cutter. I’m not sure Wardlow can be salvaged at this point, at least for me. I watched for Willie Mack, otherwise I would’ve FFWD. Tag match was fine, good for 2.0 to get a TV match in their hometown.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tiUQMiaGgJg Katsuyori Shibata on Hey! (EW).

Eddie vs Claudio was very good as expected and I dug the roll-up finish, that is something it feels like we haven't seen in any of the CC matches yet (unless I missed it). Working a match around Andrade attacking and busting open Bryan's legitimately injured eye socket was a fucking choice. Good gravy. That said, I actually thought the first match they had was better once they got past the initial horror of the injury. Hopefully this is a heel turn cemented for Andrade leading to him vs Miro, because if not, what was the point of all that.

I'm also old so I understand. I almost said FMW instead of FMV. Why the hell would FMW make video games I don't know. When GTAVII is out, I may be having to take arthritis medicine and use dentures.

The funny thing about the "Our Season Never Ends" ads is that they started airing those, and Randy Savage was gone like two weeks later and on WCW TV. THE BEST.

I really do miss the days where any respectable wrestling company used the “geographic reach + WRESTLING + organization type” naming convention. World Wrestling Federation. National Wrestling Alliance.” Political unrest, stabilize society, yeah!!

I absolutely know I'm going to forget some stuff, but im going to give my best at an updated list. 1. Danielson/ZSJ, WrestleDream 2. Hangman Page/Swerve Strickland, AEW Full Gear 3. Omega/Ospreay, AEW Forbidden Door 4. Danielson/Starks, Strap Match, AEW All Out 5. Danielson/Kingston, AEW Collision, 12/2/2023 6. Hangman Page/Jon Moxley, AEW Revolution 7. Bullet Club Gold v FTR, AEW Collision July 15, 2023 8. Danielson v Okada, AEW Forbidden Door 9. MJF/Adam Cole, AEW All In. *I have an asterisk on this one because it's not in the top 10 best matches I watched this year in AEW, not close. But why I'm including it is because MJF and Adam Cole had an almost impossible task of main eventing AEWs first HUGE stadium show in a foreign market. The pressure and expectations were off of the fucking charts and they both not only delivered a great match, but they delivered pitch perfect story notes on, and your mileage may vary, an incredible, organic storyline. I didn't want to put it above any of the other matches, but it deserves a top 10 nod. 10. Anna Jay-AS and Tay Melo v Willow Nightingale and Ruby Soho, AEW Rampage, 01/13/2023 *I have an asterisk for this one as well. There were "better" matches throughout the year, even in the womens division, but I can't overlook how amazing this match was and what all 4 competitors put themselves through. It's a sentimental favorite because i Loved the pairing of Ruby and Willow(I am STILL so heartbroken I can't find their merch shirt they wore in this match for my daughter and I, if anyone has a link, please drop it here. Honorable Mentions: MJF/Danielson, Garcia/Danielson, Danielson/RUSH, Danielson/Bandido, any of the other Mox/Hangman matches, FTR/Young Bucks(All In), Swerve in Our Glory/Acclaimed, Mox/Orange Cassidy 1. EDIT: I'm sitting here and just thinking of more and more and more matches i would include. Lull in the product or not, AEW never fails to put on amazing matches.

Win.

Another excellent bonenkai (year-end party) all you can drink and Japanese style Chinese food, with my old drinking buddy Asian Coogar and a bar-full of friends. Including some wrestlers, like Tachibana, Moriya (ex-FUCK, whom I met at the Nepalese rooftop BBQ party), and Taiyoto Kamen (whom I maybe last drank with at A-Toys MMA bar in 2015). It's always great to see everyone and I was very happy to hear my name shouted out joyfully again and again, by my old drinking friends. The food was excellent, the beer and umeshu flowed like wine, three hours passed like ten minutes. I am one lucky prick. Also, the Gee! Store around the corner from the back-alley party location had a neato t-shirt in my size.

God - Dean would have fucking loved this

I got to see Yuya live on an Impact show this summer and was pretty impressed by him.

As others have said, the gimmick doesn’t work if everyone else plays along. Validating the gimmick ruined it.

Willie playing KO while pulling his pants back up was a hilarious finish. Reminded me of Al Snow at WM 2000.

I always liked Tenta's, the nice level between the suspension of disbelief that he's going to get him over before squashing him dead

There are ways for JT, ever heard of time dilation? He just needs a space ship to fly a couple of years close to the speed-of-light, and voilà.

Hey hey! I finally got around to Great O-Khan vs. Moxley and it was nutty. Them exchanging submissions over by the wall of the venue at the edge of the crowd with Moxley leaking all over the place is hilarious. The look on O-Khan's face when he realized Mox had cut his ponytail: priceless.

One thing about the Wardlow competitive squash was Willie actually looked tough for him to pick up, like either he was a sandbagger or it was a total deadlift. So there was that? Man oh man does he need a haircut.

Personally, I'd just like it if the Meltzer/AEW crowd would admit that the top NJPW guys got surpassed in terms of match quality by the top NOAH/AJPW guys years ago. Danielson vs. guys like Nakajima or Miyahara or Kenoh would be a way better match than Okada at this point...

Glad Ilja Dragunov ditched Torpedo Moscow for the H Bomb as his main finish this year. Latter is so much better.

In 2023, we get George South vs Action Mike Jackson for the first time ever and it's something the people are wanting to see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3lj9kly5F0

Glenn rules and I'm glad he's still kicking. The guy must've snorted half of Bolivia back in the day but looks pretty good and still like a total badass rock star.

Did I mention before that I can dance? I don't have much to add on The Acclaimed. They got over by improving in the ring and then they leaned too much into the comedy schtick like a lot of AEW has. I think they were feuding with Jarrett etc. in a bunch of garbage matches? They basically became fast forward material for me. I wasn't a fan of The Acclaimed getting the trios titles because AEW established them as workrate belts with the best of 7 and The Elite as the first champs, House of Black was fine but muddied with the House Rules stuff....now the belts are basically forgotten after being the main focus of television to kick off the year

The main event of Rampage was so fucking great and the rest of the show blew massive chunks. Congrats to board favorite Angelico for having Orange Cassidy’s worst match in 2 years.

Bunker Hill is pretty much where things streamline. It's arguably the single biggest point of no return in the game.

I think Caster could also have a good singles run, he’s a weird dude with a lot of personality and some ring skills. But Bowens is capable of having a world title run. I’ve said before he and Fletcher are my picks to be top card guys within a couple years.

You don't fire a coach for something they said 2.5 years ago in front of enough people that everyone in the organization knew about it, unless you were looking to fire the coach anyway and were itching for an excuse. Bills fans that want him fired mid-season while still (kinda) in the playoff hunt are a special kind of nutty, there isn't anyone "waiting in the wings" in Buffalo that is a better coach. Unless people are itching for a Joe Brady coaching run. Evaluating after the season is still the right move, whether they want to take this information going public into consideration is up to them.

Florida wrestling. Take your pick between 1) Ric Flair showing amateur wrestling skills during a public workout before asking Barry Windham to join him in the ring. naturally this being territorial wrestling, the exact same angle was run with Flair and Piper in Mid-Atlantic Or.. 2) Video proof of Gentleman Jim Holliday. An interview with Holliday, Hector Guerrero and Barbara Clary. https://youtu.be/HkvKlL79vjY Why yes, Hector was the Guerrero brother closest to Eddie in age (13 year age difference though). Watch as Hector and Barbara converse in Spanish! Ponder as to why Jim Holliday has a job! Actually the whole reason for Holliday was something I probably typed about on here but JJ Dillon signed an “exclusive” deal to only manage Ron Bass. Therefore the heels who would have been managed by Dillon ended up being managed by Holliday, with the implication that Holliday was just a front for Dillon.

THIS company loves tournaments?

Thank @Elsalvajeloco (the damn tagging thing won't work for me anymore, just like putting videos in, just like posting fucking pictures...) because he wrote this in the joshi thread and I wasn't not gonna watch it then: