Leaderboard

Coming out to no music but have jack perry reading self-indulgent poems on the way to the ring

some on Reddit/SC is much meaner than me and typed this about Jack Perry's look tonight: "He looks like Danny Masterson broke out of prison and has been living on the run in an old school bus in the woods"

One good thing about AEW is that it quite often doesn't feel like the same show week to week. There isn't just one AEW. Dynamite is: Samoa Joe vs HOOK for the World Title Gates of Agony/Brian Cage vs Bullet Club Gold for the ROH Six-Man Title Christian Cage vs Dustin Rhodes for the TNT Title Young Bucks Talk And some Women's Match and 1-2 more things. I feel like if you told someone that was the going to be the show two months ago (maybe even two weeks ago), they'd shrug and believe you, but no one would have possibly guessed it.

Get "Smart" Mark Sterling on the phone! I honestly think it's for the best. It feels like life has gone on without Perry, and bringing him back now would just make him feel like a retread. Keep him with New Japan for the foreseeable future, and maybe do something with him at Forbidden Door and let him cut some scathing promo about how AEW did him wrong and try to create some buzz for him.

What a shame. As we all know, there's no greater paragon of asking permission and ensuring consent than Vince McMahon.

I'm pretty sure the "NWA Independent World Title" was a vanity belt that was only defended on shows promoted by Sabu in Michigan/Ohio around 94/95. Those were the shows that were colloquially known on tape lists for many years listed under the banner of "NWA Sabu" though I'm guessing local promotion probably just listed them as "NWA Wrestling" LOL, even Cagematch lists the shows during this time under the promotional banner of "National Wrestling Alliance Sabu" https://www.cagematch.net/?id=8&nr=356&page=4

Thanks Cleveland! Also, by beating the Browns today, Texans actually improved our draft position for the 2024 draft!

It really happened. I was ten the last time. Ten!

I got around to watching the Arsion reunion today. I was disappointed by the lack of Aja Kong, but wasn't surprised. It seemed like in the leadup, they really went out of their way to not mention Aja. Their Twitter account went over literally everyone who worked for Arsion license by license except for Aja, so her not being there wasn't a surprise. It seems like everyone who wanted to participate was there, since Ryo Miyuki was there. For those not familiar with Ryo Miyuki, she is remembered for another attempt at capturing the Ayako Hamada lightning in a bottle, debuting way before she was ready and wrestling only seven matches for Arsion, including her worked(?) shoot quitting against Michiko Ohmukai, plus one match for GAEA against Chigusa Nagayo that Chigusa cut short when she realized Miyuki was nowhere near ready for this. Mariko Yoshida wore her ring costume and still looked like she could tie everyone up in knots. Michiko Ohmukai also looked like she hasn't aged much, but that wasn't too much of a surprise for me since I saw her during the Mizuki Endo/Aiger retirement. It was great to see Etsuko Mita again as well. There were videos sent in for folks who couldn't be there, which wasn't shown on the stream but ambient audio picked it up. Reggie Bennett, Bionic J, and Melissa were included, and it sounded like the Apache sisters were as well. As for the matches, they were what they were. Risa Sera had to fill in for the injured Unagi Sayaka as the fill in for La Galactica 2000 against noki-A (Unagi was billed as the 2nd Generation La Galactica, and when Unagi was concussed and had to pull out, Risa was billed as the 3rd Generation La Galactica). The mask she was wearing was clearly made for Unagi and Risa didn't look comfortable in it at all, so they played the match for comedy with Risa only wearing the mask from the costume and opting for her usual ring gear instead, and insisting she wasn't Risa Sera. noki-A accidentally twisted the mask around with boot scrapes and that's when Risa decided just to take the mask off and wrestle normally, and the match picked up from that point. I kinda wish we had a time machine and could get AKINO/noki-A from the Arsion era against the mid-2010s Risa Sera, but this was fine for what it was. Sareee & Cherry against Kakeru Sekiguchi & Kizuna Tanaka was also fine. I'm probably a lot higher on Kizuna than a lot of folks, and I like seeing her working places other than Wave to pick up experience. She reminds me a lot of her mom, in that she's got the plucky underdog work down really well, but I think she could be a lot more, especially with her grappling skill. When Sareee and Kizuna were in together, it made me want to see a singles match between the two after Kizuna picks up more ring time so it isn't booked as a squash considering the difference in experience between the two. Sareee didn't do a lot, but she didn't really need to; she's seen as very much above the opponents elsewhere, so rather than squash Kizuna, she let Kizuna shine against Cherry before putting her away. The main event was three wrestlers who were still active (Leon, AKINO, and Yuu Yamagata) against Michiko Ohmukai, Yumi Fukawa, and Ai Fujita. It was smart to put the active wrestlers on one side so they could carry the match if needed. Ohmukai works a couple of matches a year and usually looks good, but Fukawa and Fujita haven't worked in years (almost 20 years for Fujita, 23 for Fukawa), so I was very interested to see how they'd come off. The active trio kept it very smart, low bumps and they took most of them, a lot of spots playing to the crowd, and keeping it fairly simple and low-risk for everyone. For what was essentially a nostalgia match, I was very satisfied (and especially thankful considering Fukawa's injury history). Should you watch the show? Sure, if you liked Arsion. It won't blow you away, there's only three matches, but everyone who participated looked happy and that gave me a warm feeling to know that these folks are doing okay.

He good

His Mister Mojo Risin anagram would be Crap Jerky.

The story about Pierce telling the team about the Giants team who beat the Pats and then McDaniels throwing a hissy fit instantly made me a fan of Pierce lol

Currently thinking about a world where TNA rebrands as Turner Nonstop Action in 2005 post-FSN/pre-Spike in order to get on a Ted network.

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

Lol well that's the safest bet ever. The company he showed up at is on such good terms with AEW they let one of their main event guys go on AEW PPV to announce he's signing with AEW 4 months early. It's definitely all approved. New Japan wouldn't use an AEW contract and all that and risk heat and politics messing with a good relationship. I'm sure JB is still on his AEW deal and getting paid by AEW. Who knows maybe they didn't want him back and this was a compromise. Or maybe lawyers got involved and said you can't ice him out the remainder of his contract or some such. I'd be legitimately shocked if this was not agreed to by all parties and part of at least a vague plan to rehab JB / reinvent him.

This 100%. Hollywood rich kid/nepo baby. Are he and Anna Jay still a thing? Stick her on his arm too.

Look I want to be, begrudgingly, happy for you Lions fans for having a fun season after all the misery you've endured. And I've got a soft spot for David Montgomery. But I can't take the Lions AND Packers winning playoff games in the same day. Sorry not sorry. Go Rams.

FU*CK! is 100% still active! They've moved away from death match style but still run shows in basements in front of, like, 30 people. Current Far East Asian Champion is Lucha Master Takemaru, whom I am sure I have met, but I can't find a picture of us together. I found a picture with Moriya, who is a current FU*CK! mainstay, and with Fuke, who worked for them back in the day. Fuke is a Fujiwara guy, and Moriya was trained by Kurisu! I am connected to current FU*CK! through my close friend Kuuga/Cooger/Asian Cooger (in fact I am probably going drinking with Cooger and Moriya again soon) so, SINCERE OFFER HERE: If the fine folks promoting this show ever manage to raise enough sponsorship dough to fly some wrestlers in from Japan I would be quite happy to liaise the Osaka Indie scene for y'all. How about Bodyguard singing his entrance theme on the way to the ring? DEAN loved that. I am SURE I could convince some good people to go if it were at all financially viable. This year, or at any time in the future.

*checks Wikipedia* Joe Flacco feels like a future Dallas Cowboy

Oh man, when Elora showed up as Bonnie and when the woman from the clinic showed up I was in heaven. Sucks that Big was only in it for the one episode. I’m through three episodes and love it. This is fantastic. Also had no idea that the actress for Maya is both deaf and an amputee and she was bitten in the face by a dog when she was a kid. Before getting cast as Echo, she was working at a nursing home. She had what sounds like a rough ass life on the reservation so Good on her for doing everything she’s done.

Having Dustin, Willie Mack, and JD Drake all wrestling unannounced feels like TK flirting with me, personally. They've really backed into a great character for Garcia as the guy who will stand up to anyone no matter how bad a motherfucker they are (Sting, Danielson, Brody) and it really works for him. He was absolutely king-sized last night taking a huge beating but still getting in his shots. Please don't let them screw this up. E: Also, what the hell is painted on Garcia's pants? It looks like a uterus with eyes.

Who would be the Ray Manzarek that can work two different styles at the same time? Who will be the John Densmore who is super uptight and refuses to do anything modern so he wrestles like somebody from the '50s?

I'll give the Boy of the Jungle a strong C for his Morrison. Having apparently gained no weight though, nor reeking of bourbon (that we know of, anyway) he only gets a middle grade. Jimbo won't be spinning in his grave on this one. Not to be a conspiracy theorist but I'm wondering if AEW had anything to do with this appearance. It's possible if they want him back then this is an angle, and if not then they might've smoothed the way for him showing up. Really, either is highly likely. It'll come out in the wash sooner or later.

Poor Joe Flacco. When you're in the middle of a Cinderella story, but the clock was set wrong and you turn back into a pumpkin mid-game.

indians scattered on dawns highway bleeding; ghosts crowd the young childs mind

Turner Broadcasting still had a WTBS that didn't air the same programming as TBS. Turner South aired some wrestling archival stuff in 2001 too.

It's a tossup between RWTL (Real World Tag League) finals: '77 and '79 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_veOBiaK14&ab_channel=ClassicsPuro83 '77 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XY5wtCuzOg4&ab_channel=ClassicsPuro83 '79 But there are apparently some '78 matches I need to watch now just to make sure. Thanks!

“Scapegoat” for what? How honest can we get or is he under an NDA too? Does the midcard shit-disturber need to be reminding everyone he’s part of the reason Punk is doing big business and main eventing big shows elsewhere this year? Nail the Forbidden Door shut and pray his excursion is indefinite. They already ran him off, don’t care about any shooty insider nonsense they’re planning to cook up now that the bad man’s gone and they can’t deliver those matches.

I know it's only one year and lots can change, but damn does "Bryce Young over CJ Stroud" look like it has serious "Sam Bowie over Michael Jordan" potential. I am so glad he didn't come back for one more year of college.

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.

"This picture dates back to the summer of 1995. I’m holding the UFC Championship and the NWA World Title. Sabu is holding the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship and propably the NWA Independent World Title. Sabu is the only person to ever hold that title."-Dan Severn

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.

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.

indy wrestlers, don't do the "knock your opponent over onto his head" move that just happened to 89 in this game

A little late to the Brody discussion. Surprised to see the push back to it. By no means am I 100% certain it would have happened. But it's more than plausible to me. Are two super violent big vikings coming in as team like Bruiser Brody & Berserker Nord (in a more serious presentation) not a logical improvement over a fake cop & a white man pretending to be an African man? I definitely could see them slotted in the Mega Powers feud slot. The Bad News Brown slot could have been him as mentioned before, but also wouldn't he have been a good fit for Tthe Earthquake feud? Instead of large fat man sitting on him (which was basically a singles redux of The Twin Towers stuff) it could've been mean violent viking man stabbing him or something. Just squashing dudes leading to that big Summerslm payday when Hogan comes back. Doing the same table non-finish to get more house show business in. Seems like there's a lot of opportunities for him to be an upgrade over what we had in that era. It's just that it's so ingrained in our nostalgia brains that it's hard to fully wrap our heads around it.

The Dallas innovative "what if we don't cover a guy down field" defense is not working well.

1. Yes, that's the best answer probably, if not "Roadhouse Blues". 2. Are they? I haven't heard from em in ages. Always liked that team. Ohhhhh shit! I think we are all going to be very pleased with this.

You have to love the Criterion channel where you get obscure art films and also things like "cat month" where they show That Darn Cat.

Criterion also still does Top 10 lists on their website, where they have an even more eclectic group of people writing about their favorite Criterions. From Jeopardy's Ken Jennings to Kelly Reichardt, from the band Mogwai to Christopher Nolan. https://www.criterion.com/current/category/8-top-10-lists And, after you exhaust all that, Konbini does a similar video series, where they take filmmakers and actors into seemingly the last video store in Paris.

At the worst time too. The WR screen to Tyreek that got him killed was on a 3rd and more than 10. That wasn't going to make 5 yards much less 15

Watch the Luis Guzman one, just to see him hop up and down in excitement.

Teresa Teng's Dàndàn yōuqíng... Teresa Teng was a Taiwanese singer known as "The Eternal Queen of Asia Pop." She laid the foundations for modern popular Chinese music. This record has songs based on old Chinese poems and incorporates a lot of classical Chinese music, which makes it a huge departure from the rest of 1983 pop music. It sounds a bit old-fashioned (traditional might be a nicer word.) Teng has a beautiful voice, though. Akina Nakamori's Fantasy... another early effort from Japanese pop queen Akina Nakamori. If you close your eyes, you'll be transported right back to 1983 Japan. I particularly liked the upbeat numbers with the horns that sounded like they could be anime opening themes. Congresso's Ha Llegado Carta... this was cool. Some progressive rock from Chile. I'm not overly familiar with Congresso, but it seems they incorporated some ethnic sounds into this record along with a bit of jazz fusion. The instrumental tracks were great. TSA's TSA... this was a Polish hard rock album. One of the better hard rock albums of the year in what was a sorry year for hard rock albums. Chris Rea's Water Signs... apparently, Rea was ready to throw in the towel and quit the music business when this record was released. His label wouldn't fund the record and he had to release it as an album full of demos. The record sold particularly well in Ireland, which led to an extensive tour there that saved Rea's career. The cool thing about the record is that because it's demos Rea plays most of the instruments. I like Rea's voice and enjoyed the non-existent production on the record. Disciplina kičme's Sviđa mi se da ti ne bude prijatno... wow, this packed a punch. This was a bass/drum duo from Belgrade that played extremely noisy post-punk. This kicked ass. Exciter's Heavy Metal Maniac... I really like this speed metal record from Canadian band Exciter. Great album cover as well. There's an interview with the band at the end of the record where talking about Metal with Canadian accents which I find amusing for stupid reasons. The Celibate Rifles' Sideroxylon... The Celibate Rifles is a stupid name for a band. I really dislike that name. It's almost enough to make me not listen to the record. Fortunately I did because this is some kick ass Australian punk music. These guys were still kicking around when I was a teenager, but I have no recollection of them. That won't stop me from declaring them Australia's greatest punk band, though. Tokyo Blade's Tokyo Blade... I never really got why Tokyo Blade called themselves Tokyo Blade. I guess it sounded exotic to a bunch of lads from Salisbury. Anyway, this rules as many of you will already know. It's everything you love about NWOBHM from the scorching riffs to the soaring vocals and guitar solos. Love it. Savatage's Sirens... I'm not a power metal guy by and large, but there are a few bands that I listen to and Savatage are one of them. This album kicks ass. The guitarwork and the vocals are as good as any metal album from '83 and it's probably the creepiest record to boot. Chaos U.K.'s Chaos U.K... okay, this was another version of a harder form of UK82 and UK street punk and it was very, very good. They kept a blistering pace on the best tracks. I'm totally down with this type of UK82.

Lol pulling an Inoki, minus the kendo stick

Alvarez always tells a story about working on Flowers shows, where he and another guy were stinking up the place and Flowers would run out and just legit cane the shit out of them both. I can't recall but it sounds like it happened more than once, some real Gong Show type shit.

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.

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.

@Gordi the former AEW fan's list is my list, straight up. No notes. That said, I think (for obvious, and correct reasons) we're all thinking monster-of-the-month with it - to mix it up, what about guys who could give him something like a less comical version of the Shawn match at SummerSlam that one year? There was a lot of Bucks debating in the AEW TV thread this week, I think either of those guys would've been great Hogan pinballs. And along those lines, you certainly can't say pinball without Darby. Here's one for @The Natural: how about Danielson vs Hogan with Danielson being a smaller, meaner Stan Hansen? Edit: He's obviously a racist dog, but the kid in me is a little bummed we didn't get a 'Hulk Hogan: Deathmatch Worker' run

Stephen A. built his entire career on screaming into a microphone, him calmly calling Whitlock the worst human being he has ever met, is so fucking hilarious. He wants us all to understand that this ain't part of the show, he legitimately hates this piece of shit.