Leaderboard

I mean its not the worst Hall & Oates tribute band I've ever seen?

Jim Ross continues to be horrible. Maybe the Sting match can be his last match, too. “Swerve reminds me of Ed Reed” is the new “Sammy reminds me of Gino Hernandez.” He had to restrain himself from talking about Shida being just like Inoki and Aminata reminding him of Butch Reed. “Why is Swerve risking going to the top rope?!” Did this bitter old turd ever criticize Bobby Eaton? What good does this type of commentary do anyone? The best was Excalibur throwing it to Ross and all JR could add was spouting Hager’s height and weight before moving on to Hager’s footbaw background. I swear he could be replaced by a soundboard or AI and nobody would know.

The Joe/Lesnar feud gave us the awesome moment where Joe calmly threatened Paul Heyman with a smile on his face an then chokes him out. Just a brilliant segment. Really felt that Joe should've won the belt in that feud. So happy to see him on top now with the same aura.

Samoa Joe as World Champion of a big company is awesome. I saw nothing of his run as TNA champion (I’m not even 100 he was). So I can’t state how well he did. The potential he showed in ROH as their big G so planted the idea that WWE would be stupid not to scoop him up and monster heel him to the moon. They did. EVENTUALLY! The big E run was pretty “OK” I guess. At least he got to mix it up with Lesner a little bit. FWIW. So top guy Joe is something I’ve waited a long time to see. He fucking rules. Can I get a Joe Bomb? BOOM! Yes, I can.

Funny that people are pretending not to know the difference between super cold weather vs. cold weather and two to three feet of snow and 60 MPH gusts of wind and a thundersnow storm and a literal travel ban in the area. Football fans are the least serious people on the Internet.

Lol pulling an Inoki, minus the kendo stick

Can we be sure it's actually the same hat, or if they are all just fucking with him now that they know that he's not really over the hat yet, or really ever? They found an obvious weak spot and are cruelly and efficiently exploiting it?

I’ll be so happy when this TNA PPV is over so I’ll stop getting the Triller banner that looks like Alex Shelly is wearing a party hat.

I think bringing in Cactus Jack around the same time he first left WCW in June 1990, and does the feud with Sting instead it's with Hogan (rather than pairing him with Earthquake), it would have been fun. But yes, also captivated by the idea of Sabu hitting an arabian facebuster on Hulk through a table, Hulk no selling it, hulking up, and Sabu cutting it off by throwing a chair at his head. Scott Hall would have been handy too. He feeds well for Hogan's offence, Hall's big spots are things you could see Hogan taking without making him look weak, hulking up whilst up for the Razor's Edge has way too much Christ-like imagery for it not to feed his ego either.

Especially looking forward to this one:

*boop*

I don't really get all the backlash for Sting against the Young Bucks as his last match. First of all I don't need a message board to tell me Sting picked his own opponents. Second of all honestly they are probably the best choice for doing a match where like half of it is non-physical bullshit that Sting can still do at 64. Thirdly it's an easy match writes itself where Darby plays Ricky Mordon for like 10 minutes and then you get the hot tag to Sting for the big finish.

They need to put together a commemorative program consisting of all Dean's Smackdown workrate comics.

Austin Luke vs Marcus Mathers - I Quit Death Match Hey, it's an I Quit, light tubes, twink death match! These two young skinny dudes have decided they are gonna wreck their potential love lives by scarring themselves up before they turn 30 (or even 25). The venue is rather small but I wouldn't have it any other way for DEAN's show. For this show, however, it's... not advisable. Glass gets thrown absolutely everywhere and I can only imagine sitting on one of those sides where there are like two rows of seats between the ring and the wall. Apparently the two have had enough beef to have a glass match so there is much breakage of tubing. It's not just smashing each other, they wrest control from each other over the tubes and try (and sometime fail) to do some neat spots like the Northern Lights suplex while holding a tube to the other guy's back. Mathers gets cut up the most, in the front which the camera gets a good close-up of him checking himself in the ropes before he starts bleeding, a nasty back cut, and eventually his shoulder too. He tries to cut up Austin's forehead with a tube on three sides of the ring but it looks bad and he doesn't bleed. Some things are better done at a distance. They also work pretty stiff with some serious chops and kicks, and there are two glass panes that end up getting used. It's been awhile since I saw a light tube match after getting really burnt out on them with BJW in the early 2010s, so taking some time off and some psychology injected into the proceedings helped. Good match if you can take the gore, which is just mid-level for a vampire like me.

I’ll never forget the first time I saw Joe in person when he murdered Paul London in an ROH title defense in NJ, fucking godlike. I’ll also never forget being there in person when his reign ended against Aries.

Sorry for the delay in responding. I have been trying to come up with a story worth telling that won't make anyone look or feel too bad if it gets back to them. The first piece of writing I ever sold was a story on Big John Tenta. The second was an interview with Tim. Both of them were really generous with their time, at least partly because I had connections at Wrestling's Main Event magazine and it sure wasn't going to hurt their careers any to get their story and picture into one of the New York rags. But also they were both, in my opinion, genuinely decent human beings. Both were LEGIT tough guys, too. But they expressed it differently. John was very quiet and laid back in real life. Tim Flowers was larger than life. Like a John Wayne or Clint Eastwood character. More than once, I heard him say, "As long as you don't mess with me, my family, my house, my dog, or my car, we're not going to have any problem." And as much as anyone I have ever met, I got the distinct sense that you'd really have to be some kind of idiot to mess with Tim. He absolutely had everyone's respect. Here's the story: I was one of a big group of wrestlers, etc, invited to Tim's home for the goodbye party before he left to work in Calgary. (Which in the end didn't work out for him). Here he was, talking openly in front of a group of wrestlers about how Stu had said the only two "worth a shit" in Vancouver were him and Tenta. And NOBODY was offended. We could all see that they were on a different level. But to me, THAT is respect. I definitely respected him. Learned a fair bit from him in the short time I knew him. i do remember being bummed out when he started promoting shows in Vancouver after the collapse of All Star, and declared that anyone who wanted to work for him wasn't allowed to work for any other promoter in the area. I worked for Rocky DellaSera, and was on friendly terms with Michelle Starr and Mike Roselli, so that was that. Last I heard, he was still living in BC and working the occasional show. He'd have to be in his early 60s by now. I assume it would still be a bad idea to mess with him.

fuck

At first it felt like having the Continental Crown defence as the opener and a Dark Order trios match as the main was kind of backward? But. I ended up REALLY enjoying that main event. It was 100% a return to the goofy indie AEW that I am so painfully nostalgic for. LOVED the (thikk gold) chain wrestling! LOVED the return of TRADITIONAL HAT-BASED PSYCHOLOGY!!! Really LOVED Cool Hand coming out all mopey with the cake residue still all over his face. I think he should ALWAYS come out like that now, like when guys get their head shaved once and their hair never grows back. PERFECT use of Negative 1. My second favourite thing on the show was Mark Briscoe's facial expressions in the bit with the Hardyz. Which is really saying something because it means Eddie Kingston's SUBLIME selling was only my third-favourite thing on Rampage today. Number four was the other announcers completely no-selling JR's constant American Football references. Speaking of unfortunate JR-isms: After he referred to Swerve (but not Sydal) as an athlete in their match, I wondered how long it would take for him to refer to Queen (but not Shida) as an athlete as well. Sure enough, about ten or fifteen seconds in... I kind of have to assume that, even if someone were to take JR aside and politely but clearly explain what the issue is there, he wouldn't be able to help himself. It's just how football-obsessed guys in his generation think and speak. It's ingrained. Sidetrack #1: AEW Pay Forever The Storm is Coming Downloadable Content Pack has dropped. For "only" $12 US, or 1430 Japanese yen, you get Outcasts-version Toni Storm plus 10 music tracks. So, only three major issues that I can see here. First: You have to be kidding with that price. Second: For an out of date character model, and no way to even make Timeless Toni. and Third: If you don't want to wildly overpay for an out of date character, there is no way to add the new music. Just like you HAVE TO purchase the Acclaimed to get the crap version of the new Dynamite arena. And that is a shame, because the pack includes such timely, in-demand themes as the one Men of the Year used. That was All Ego and Scorp, right? It is, sincerely, as if they are DESPERATE to make everyone who paid full price for the game FURIOUS with AEW. related Sidetrack #2 So the game stuff seems to have affected the way I look at AEW as a whole. I REALLY noticed it watching that excellent video on YouTube about great moments at Daily's Place. At the time, my point of view was as a fan who had been DREAMING of a big fun fan-friendly goofy awesome indie/Japan/Mexico non-corporate pro wrestling TV show and my tendency was to look for the good in everything AEW presented. Now, through more jaded eyes: there really always has been some ridiculous-in-a-bad-way/annoying/outright awful stuff mixed in with all of the entertaining and spectacular awesomeness and nice/genuinely moving stuff. It's really interesting! To me, anyway. Totally Unrelated Side-Track #3: AJPW MANIAx had a match where the Japanese-American ex-sumo Saito Brothers faced off. It was PURE BMMSM. Just two massive dudes laying it in until one of them couldn't get back up any more. LOVED that match. It's about 1:08 into the video. What I loved the most about it was that there was close to zero fancy Dan bullshit in the match. That being said, I also enjoyed Ospreay vs Nick Wayne (both AEW-related!) from GCW even though it's about 96% fancy Dan bullshit. Matt, I think you should watch this one! Every move will make you grind your teeth, but there is 100% a classic "touring dominant star faces plucky local underdog favourite" story being told here, and I sincerely believe it gives the match something approaching a clear and comprehensible structure (!) Plus the fan response is *chef's kiss* in this one. Maybe that match gives us some insight into what Ospreay in AEW will be like. Spots plus story plus structure? Could be fun! The main event of that AJPW show is NASTY. (Nakajimmy vs Kento 2). Fuminori Abe, El Lindaman, Minoru Suzuki, and Tatsumi Fujinami are all on the show, as well. Anyway, hope at least a few other people here enjoyed the main as much as I did. I'll assume that almost everyone also liked Kingston vs Yuta. Because: Obviously. Why wouldn't you?

So, the vinyl edition of Danzig's 1999 album "666: Satan's Child" is currently the #1 selling physical media music product on Amazon... ...because a bunch of record collectors figured out that due to Amazon fulfillment errors, they would receive a different LP that in many instances would be worth more money. https://boardislife.proboards.com/thread/12920/amazon-danzig-vinyl-mystery-records

3/20/87: Chono vs Hashimoto: This was for the Young Lion's Cup.I don't have a great sense of Chono except for his look and the Yakuza Kick, but I'll learn. That's the point. It might just take a bit. he already had the goatee here. First third of this was him trying to ground Hashimoto out of desperation. That worked until it didn't. Hashimoto's kicks were like nothing else in the promotion, just so impactful and compacting. And I swear, when he locked a hold in, it almost wasn't fair to his opponent. It felt like cheating that the guy this big and this strong could also choke you out. Chono held his own but he was playing defense (preemptive or otherwise) for a lot of this. He hit some big moves like a samoan drop, but then hashimoto would answer with a bridging fallaway slam. It was pretty clear that Hashimoto was the stronger, better of the two but Chono still got a roll up out of nowhere. Felt a little too much like the finish to the tag match really, but that might have been on purpose. Oh and Fujinami was the ref here. Not that you'd know it.

Roger chose the indoor game in Texas during what looks like a historically cold weekend for the NFL playoffs. Good decision.

I saw the Joe/Kobashi/Homicide/Ki and Joe/Danielson/Kenta/Marufuji tags in person. The common denominator is that my old brain can remember all the participants, but not who tagged with who.

I mean I have different questions about the wisdom of the Swerve Stomp than that

5:56.

The only time I saw Joe live was at the Chicago Reborn where he defended the world title against…Striker? I think that was his name? It was a shit dude in ROH with bad hair. My favorite memory of that match is Joe turning to our section because we, as well as everyone, were yelling out shit from Chappelle’s Show, and Joe goes, “Is Samoa Joe gonna have to choke a bitch?” I don’t recall Joe being on the Thanksgiving Eve Dynamite I went to in 2022… And the first match of his I saw period was an early early early ROH match. It was Samoa Joe vs Low Ki. At the time, it basically blew my mind. They had a ridiculous opening sequence that was likely choreographed but who cares because it fucking ruled and it looked great. It looked like something out of the Matrix. That turned me into an instant fan. It’s unfortunate he spent so much time in TNA, but what are you going to do when your other options were WWE where they wanted him to be Umaga and not cut promos, ROH which was in worse shape than TNA, NJPW which was in really rough shape but starting to to get better, or NOAH which was worse off than NJPW. He’d also be in total obscurity over in Japan so at least he got to build his legend in TNA. And now he’s at his rightful place at the top of a major company.

New wrestling crossword! https://twitter.com/avalanchestyle/status/1746193384631308378

I bet Fonzie could have fastcounted Sting better than Nick Patrick

H2O shows there are infamous for their “fans bring the weapons” matches and the creative stuff people bring. One time my brother brought a cheese grater strapped to a bible.

You can take that shit and flush it down the toilet right now.

Ugh, this was another one I caught. Didn't they fuck up Joe/Angle and give it to Angle?

Dude, I just watched a Goliath and Big Bubba (the future Tugboat/Typhoon) match the other week. I was like, "why is One Man Gang tagging with Typhoon?". Then, I realized that wasn't One Man Gang. The period when Memphis wrestling is still very much relevant but definitely not as hot as the earlier part of the 1980s is very intriguing. You're getting maybe one or two guys like Fred Ottman who clearly have a WWF look but they're relying more and more on guys who would be mainstays and never really leave Memphis like (Boy) Tony Falk, Jerry Bryant, Lou Winston, Billy Travis, David Haskins. You got the Interns under various gimmicks. Plowboy Frazier post WWF fame is rolling around literally and figuratively. Tojo is doing matches here and there. Phil Hickerson shows up every once and awhile. That talent pipeline ain't what it use to be. I mean I guess it would set the course for the USWA mid 90s days where you get Reggie B. Fine and Spellbinder (who only got to be in WWF for like a few days caused he sucked so bad) who you definitely knew weren't going to be anywhere except wrestling in that one particular place. For every Harlem Knights and Jeff Jarrett you got who went on to have some to great success in the bigger organizations, you got six or seven dudes who were either too Southern especially by Vince or Bischoff standards or too random generated colorless 90s Independent wrestler.

Loved when they surrounded him and he got all expectant like "Is it time to goober-out yet? I'm waiting... I'm waiting... NOW!"

That's an hour from my folk's place in Little Egg Harbor, NJ. I got four weeks of vacation time. I'm gonna do my best to be there.

He jobbed to King David before David was even crowned, brother, he's no threat to the Hulkster. That's not gonna work for Hogan, brother.

the Yankees signing Stroman is an amazing favor to WFAN callers

We need a Copeland/Hook team so we can get a “you think you know me” / “you don’t even know me” mashup.

I see Mark Davis returning to action, that's exciting.

THAT OLD DOG JIM MILLER STILL HUNTIN' BAAYYBEEEEEE

Exciter RULES. I bought a 2-on-1 tape of their first two for cheap for a vacation, listened to it and thought it was cheesy. Gave it another try later on, and I specifically remember walking down the street at night from a neighbor's house where my parents were partying on a Friday, listening to it on my Walkman, and "Delivering to the Master" came on. It just clicked. From then on I knew this old '80s metal shit was for me. Sirens is okay. Most of their early albums are, but Savatage is one of those bands that I can kind of take or leave; they just never stuck with me like others though they're just as talented and well-written. Hall of the Mountain King is probably my favorite. Chaos UK are hugely important to the future of punk from then on out. Together with Disorder they formed a two-pronged attack that inspired everyone in hardcore, maybe not as much as Discharge but close. The Japanese were first to take up their mantle with bands like Confuse and Gai, which segued into the "crasher crust" subgenre of bands like Gloom and Life who combined the D-beat of Doom and ENT with the noise of Chaos UK and Disorder to form a wall of sound. From then on there are lines of pogo-punk, noisecore, and raw punk bands who kept the influence present. Frenzy and Zyanose are two particular denizens of the style these days that are rather good.

I never noticed how cozy Houston's stadium looked until today (meaning how close the front row is to the field)

Tim Flowers hit a top rope pile driver/Diamond Driver on The Frog on an episode of All Star Wrestling that popped me huge when I was a kid.

I don't order from Amazon after they fucked up two separate Big Black orders. One time I got a copy of Funkadelic's Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow though, and I kept that motherfucker. Then I found Discogs and now all my money goes to them and a handful of labels

Bill Hayes also hit number one on the Billboard in 1955.

Must've hit the sweet spot tonight because I tuned in right as Bayley vs. Belair started. That match was extremely good and in the running for best of the week if not year so far. Here's the genius thing about it: it was entirely based around the ring, physically. They utilized the ropes, the posts, the apron as if it were a third opponent in the match. Almost all the offense revolved around some part of it. Probably the best part was Bayley tying Bianca's braid to the bottom rope, which was an odd choice, but then they made an awesome spot out of that with Bayley tripping over it at 2X speed, going face first into the middle buckle like she was shot out of a cannon. Really, really smart match. The seeds of Damage CNTRL sending their leader into exile are already planted so lets see how this ends up panning out. I missed Theory's injury because I decided taking a shower instead of watching him was a better idea. Got lucky there too. Still, I wouldn't wish any head or neck injury on anybody, hope it isn't serious. Hopefully they look at that footage, remember what they did with Ilja at the end of last year and make a new resolution to not play with that shit for angles. LA Knight has the goofiest punches of anyone in ages and ages. It's like his arm does the Worm when he throws them. Also hilarious was Jimmy Uso going into KARATE STANCE~! to ward off an approaching Knight on the outside, haha. Heyman was pulling faces as broad as Kingston on the other channel tonight, too.

I recall absolutely loving Heat and I guess I still do, but I have to say, in my latest rewatch, Pacino’s overacting comes as close as humanly possible to ruining this film.

He's long been noted as sounding too much like Ghostface Killah, which is definitely not the worst person to either imitate or sound familiar to in hip hop. I've never listened to any of his albums. If anyone on here has a recommendation, I'd check it out and give my appraisal. I've certainly seen enough of him on Fuck, That's Delicious and he seems like a stand-up guy and a wrestling fan (ECW hats, went to see BJW in Japan).

He’s available under the Matcha Beer and Flexing DLC. You also get the mostly inactive Lucha thread as a playable area.