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Hey all So this is Matt Griffin - the CEO of ACTION Wrestling. FKA Jacey North of DVDVR 500 and Road Report fame I'm the promoter of ACTION. Thought I'd drop some things in as to how you can help us out First off, DEAN~!!! will stream live on IWTV. It's a $9.99 subscription service. If you sign up, please use code "ACTION" to give a referral credit We will be discussing sponsorships soon. You can sponsor or adopt a match, advertise your website/blog/podcast or whatever you like. No pressure, and I'm not a huge fan of asking fans for extra money We also will have a t-shirt designed and for sale on ShopIWTV.com Lastly and most importantly, if you're close, you can buy a ticket and attend. Doing a show in this weekend environment is always a risk. And thanks to Phil & Eric for having this idea. I started on DVDVR ............ a long time ago and enjoyed having the crew do Road Reports on shows I worked on. Hopefully we can honor the memory of Dean Rasmussen well

A Talent Announcement: Booked on DEAN~!!, in addition to Daniel Makabe is ~!

Yooooo I just brought up the Trustbusters yesterday!!!! DEAN might've been the only guy who liked their fake Jane's Addiction theme more than me. Awesome!!!!

Dude, it really is. There was a small moment on Dynamite this week where Schiavone mentioned in the booth that although the pandemic sucked for obvious reasons, it was such a great time for the show/promotion, and though it was stated a little clumsily (you obviously don't want to hurt anyone watching who lost a loved one, job, etc. to COVID, and he was trying to be super-careful with the phrasing) I couldn't have agreed with him more. I look at it almost like I look at my old high school/college days: man, even if it really wasn't all that great at times, just having the ability or capacity to still identify with the idea of "anything is possible" elevated the whole thing by a lot (not a Dark pun, but I'll take it).

Wait, you guys watched the Emmys? I thought that stuff was all fake

Yeah shit this is also a good call. Comes in with The Undertaker gimmick and maybe gets the quickie title run at Survivor Series 91. What a world that could have been. The Undertaker does not go down as this super long term iconic character. Just a quick reskin of a territory big deal. Maybe Mark Calaway gets packaged as Nailz. And now we have this weird timeline where the prisoner gimmick becomes an icon of the business. Hard to see him getting the longevity out of that gimmick tho. What a wild rabbit hole that timeline would be.

And yet in this section of the wrestling multiverse, everything was fine and good until that entitled surfer kid wanted to play Attitude Era.

People are going to flip when R-Truth costs Priest the cash-in. Great build in this angle throughout. They really caught lightning in a bottle with Truth doing his best work and it playing off so well with the dark emo dudes. One of the most underrated parts of Judgment Day is that despite their general goth stuff they are pretty much a comedy act. I can’t believe I am such a fan because Edge and dark underlings was absolutely not for me. But they have really been the anchor of Raw the past 18 months. There is a way where we get Becky and Rhea to headline Night 1 of WrestleMania. I would much rather see that than Punk vs. Rollins in their lame ass shooty reality TV feud coming up. Fired up Becky rules when she has something to be fired up against and maybe realizing Rhea has surpassed her is a great approach. As much as I do not want to see Seth/Punk, I did enjoy Seth vs. Jinder. One of the reasons why WWE is so hot right now is because matches are laid out so well. They did a great job in using Jinder’s goons, the looming presence of Priest, the distractions and all of that to get to some really good heel near falls before Seth figured out the puzzle. Even the women’s tag match — while it was sloppy, it had a fun layout. Good show from what I was able to watch.

I am really, really surprised there hasn't been like a Dark Side series on boxing cause there are a BILLION stories from just the 80s, 90s, and 2000s. Ibeabuchi is basically the tip of the iceberg. It would easily surpass the wrestling one just cause most of it could be substantiated and not old folk lore that got maintained through stuff like the sleaze thread. Off the top of my head: Ricky Womack, Tony Ayala Jr., Edwin Valero, Carlos Monzon's life after boxing, the suicide of promising Nevada referee Mitch Halpern, Aaron Pryor, the disappearance of Sergey Kobozev, Michael Watson, Wilfred Benitez, Michael Nunn trying to become the cocaine kingpin of Davenport, Iowa, Mike "The Bounty" Hunter (Sr.), Clifford Etienne, the whole Berbick-Ali fiasco and Don King almost being murdered by the Nation of Islam, the deaths of Robert Wangila and Jimmy Garcia, Gerald McClellan's unsavory background and then end result of the Nigel Benn fight, James Butler. Just thinking about some of these subjects make your skin crawl just because like wrestling so much stuff just went unchecked in many cases.

When someone earlier on suggested he come in in place of Bad News Brown’s slot, I interpreted it instead as taking the gimmick. “Good-ish News Brody” equivocating on the mic before calling the audience a bunch of beer-bellied sharecroppers would have been GOLD.

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

Houston @ Baltimore - Saturday, 4:30p ET Green Bay @ San Francisco - Saturday, 8p ET Tampa Bay @ Detroit - Sunday, 3p ET Kansas City @ Buffalo - Sunday, 630p ET. Assuming the Bills aren't too scared to play in the snow. Again.

Considering the state of the place and the unresolved issues? Not really. But that’s not what I said. And I hate to break kayfabe, but Octopus is clearly doing a bit.

So I’m finally caught up with Mr. Brodie Lee tribute week. I appreciate the homecoming to Daily’s Place and his importance during the pandemic. But I also did not watch during that time, so I just don’t have the emotional tie-in to a group that is largely comedy jobbers at this point. I enjoy the Silver-Reynolds team. Anna Jay is floundering some but is a solid enough hand, and I guess they had to find a way to have a women’s title match in Battle of the Belts, and it was a perfectly cromulemt match. I really enjoyed the FTR/Garcia-HOB match a lot, lots of stories going on and really had no idea who would win. Kingston-Yuta was a great match and really put Yuta over. I do recall thinking that Gordlow would really enjoy this weeks stuff, lots and lots of his guys (and gals in terms of Deeb). Adam Page-JD Drake kicked ass. Gates of Agony seem like they belong on the main roster. The street fight was a lot of fun when it was outside the main arena area, leaned mostly to comedy while still having some stiff shots. The Bill-Jericho table spot looked nasty enough, although technically Jericho was pinning Bill afterwards. The Guevara spot was just stupid and dangerous and accomplished nothing other than I guess making people not want to miss a BotB in the future? Thats about all I remember at this point.

Wait, is there anyone at all that believes that had the Punk/Perry shit not happened that thin-skinned Phil would still be happily working for AEW and having no problems to this day? I mean sure, believe whatever you like, but I feel like Dr. Strange viewing all the possibilities in the multiverse when I consider 14 million eventualities for Punk getting offended and perceiving betrayal or transgressions. I don't think there's any possibility for anything to have worked with Punk and AEW in the long run, Perry's dumb bullshit notwithstanding.

1 hour on a Saturday Night was never going to be easy. I'm okay with trying some things out and failing. Especially with this company's success rate. Combining the show with, first, Rampage and now Collision was and is a positive move. Unfortunately, the 'afterthought' part of the booking seems to persist.

The thing about the Bare Knuckle Boxing 'explosion' is, both Bas Rutten and Ken Shamrock were involved in Bare Knuckle promotions (it made it look like they were part-owners, but they were most likely just being paid to publcise someone else's shit). But, like, you lads aren't boxers. The people want Bare Knuckle MMA. Dump the shitty Unified Rules and give us MMA with 12-6 elbows, Soccer Kicks, Guillotine Knees and Headbutts legal! You could promote it as the TRUE No Holds Barred fighting, say it's better than the UFC!

That Nigel ep might be my favorite of the show by a wide margin. It's the kind of batshit insane I was hoping the show could be and I loved every second of it. And yeah BTDO is the best. I'm hoping it leads to them getting more success with the show and also in their AEW careers. They've proven to be reliable in whatever you put them in and I really hope it all pays off for them. The only thing is they are technically supposed to be heels yet I always want to cheer them.

Is Jon Peters a producer on this?

I'm not big on boxing, but I would watch the heck out of a Lucha Undergroundesque boxing show, if complete with spacemen, dragons, and mysterious Aztec medallions.

On the BKFC/bare knuckle fighting in general note, it's very hard to quantify the popularity right now. I actually happened to see an article on it late last night while watching the Eagles/Bucs game on the "growing" popularity, but I didn't see many metrics. Yeah, I do think it appears to those who loved the old SEG era UFC/pre regulation MMA. However, if the current UFC audience is niche, why would you try to build around something even more niche like old school MMA? Whether you like AEW or not, we can likely all agree is built on an organic movement. The question was, "okay, how big can this be?" followed with "Is this something that only appeals to a certain core audience?". Five years later, we have a clearer picture. That's only cause we have the ratings as arbitrary and archaic as the system can be as well PPV numbers + attendance numbers. You have zero of that for bareknuckle fighting. It's not doing well enough on paid streaming platform to get numbers reported and it's not on TV. It's just social media impressions. I dunno what you can glean from that other than people can stumble upon it. Will they actually pay for it? That's the only way it can stay alive.

They have been versions of that with a slight caveat. Like you mentioned with HBO BAD. That was basically born out of the old Gillette fight night cards back in the 50s and 60s in the birth of sports on TV (along with pro wrestling of course). However, that's probably why boxing skews old to begin with cause you're taking an old ass formula from execs who would have had to been old enough to remember that. They had to put a modern spin on that of course. Thing is eventually just like we see with wrestling today is what was designed for something else eventually itself gets repurposed and/or made to have sameness. BAD eventually just became HBO World Championship Boxing with a slightly smaller budget and just on at an hour later. There was like a two year period where Lampley and old ass Larry Merchant had to wear more informal wear or Hawaiian shirts (which just made them look even older) and Lampley making weird sexual laden, snarky comments about the ring card girls in between rounds. Then, when that didn't work, they pivoted to creating KO Nation to try to infuse it with hip hop and slotted that in the afternoons. That was suppose to be what the first few months of Shotgun Saturday Night was with a more nightclub atmosphere with the early 2000s hip hop vibe and aesthetics. They allowed fans to vote on what hot rap song was out at the time to be the walkout song for the fighters and made Ed Lover the ring announcer. Went over like a fart in church and was canceled after a year due to bad ratings. That was pretty much the end of HBO doing stuff like that. However, the late Cedric Kushner did the Thunderbox heavyweight tournament and Heavyweight Explosion theme shows around the the same time and that lasted for about four or five years until Kushner left boxing altogether. It was just random, low level fringe contenders or faded former contenders so it didn't make it past being on whatever syndicated channels no one watches. Since then, there have just been a bunch of random fly by nights ones like BET doing a couple of cards which featured Andre Ward and being promoted by Jay Z under his RocNation banner. That went down hard when a fighter in their stable suffered a serious brain injury spoke up about how crappy he was treated afterwards (got dropped by RocNation while in the hospital and then left to pay for hefty medical bills). FS1 did a few cards for some Miami based promotion that used Mike Tyson as the front man. Lasted for a few months and Mike ended up suing them IIRC. Triller tried to do the KO Nation model 15 years+ after HBO did and lost a ton of money even with the Paul brothers associated with it. Golden Boy did their Fight Night cards on Ustream (back when that was still a thing) and other streaming platforms from Club Nokia in L.A. Live for a number of years with just prospects from the South California area. That morphed into a spot for a little while on late night ESPN after like SportsCenter and then now on DAZN but now emanating from the Fantasy Springs Casino in Indio, California and may feature an occasional world title fight on rare occasions. ShoBox ran for a long time on Friday nights with Gordon Hall as the matchmaker and sometimes had that type of vibe, but I don't think it was explicitly made to be that. It was just mainly prospects who weren't big enough draws to do anything other than a casino ballroom or a smaller arena. Then, when Showtime wanted to feature UK and international talents like Ricky Hatton or Carl Froch or Mikkel Kessler, they would do shows across the pond with the ShoBox label instead of Showtime Championship Boxing. It was a mix of stuff depending on the location and the names involved. Sometimes it would be more Tuesday Night Fights on USA. Sometimes it would be the old Top Rank shows on ESPN back in the 80s and 90s. There was no set standard formula until the final years where all the shows were in mostly very small venues with lower level prospects outside of a Devin Haney or Regis Prograis cause most of the actual prospects were tied to other promoters with exclusive deals. Thus, interest for the series pretty much went down even though the fights were fine to entertaining cause Gordon Hall was a good matchmaker. So yeah, there have quite a few attempts at it. However, it's very tough to go backwards when most casual fans tune on really only to see the big fights. The hardcore base has dwindled so it's made shows like that non essential especially with most of the prospects being thrown on major PPV/big show undercards. Top Rank, since they don't have a stacked roster like the old days, fills out their ESPN and ESPN+ cards with their best prospects. And Top Rank is the only one who has a linear TV deal, which may or may not be in trouble. Even if it's not in trouble, nothing indicates they are deviating from that formula. You're not using your few draws or attractions on smaller cards. It's mostly prospects that would be used for those type of "gritty" cards for younger audiences.

Salty Dolphins fans give me life No matter what happens going forward, the season was a success.

Elton John won an Emmy for Best Live Variety Special last night, completing his EGOT. Emmy - 2023 Grammy - 1987 (and 5 other years) Oscar - 1994 (and 1 other) Tony - 2000

The only reason I can think of them not doing it is boxing's fall off in popularity. Wrestling always has a fanbase. Football is America's sport. Celebrities and trash culture are always a thing. Boxing... well, you know even better than I do. It'd be more likely that they just do a Dark Side of Sports that has a fair amount of boxing stories.

JDR has way too many misses for me to put him real high, even though his best stuff is great. Waid is my favorite guy for straight up classic super hero type stories. Grant... Well, they are the best. Period. For me, at least, there's never been anyone better than them.

Even though he was a DC guy, Paul Levitz on LSH is definitely a top 10 guy. I think my top five Marvel is Lee, Claremont, Hickman, Noncenti and Demattis (his PPTSSM run was just incredible and of course Fearful Symmetry) James

I suppose they wash away their sorrows with dirty soda.

Wait a goddamn minute. How lonely of a life are you leading where you're a crip or blood in UTAH? I feel like you're doing it wrong. Like it has to be unaffiliated from the rest of what's going on. And I am speaking as someone who comes from a state where we ended up with Vice Lords and Gangster Disciples but a good number of black people in Chicago have folks who came from either Alabama or Mississippi during the Great Migration and then some later generations moved back during various economic/redlining issues etc. So it somewhat makes sense. A bit off topic but I bring it cause he's been in the news lately due to health: It always cracks me up when I was an old David Tua fight, and I see Afa in his corner hyping him up. Keep in mind, this is around the same time Butterbean shows up in WWF. He (Tua) was WAY too good to just jump to WWF when he was a legit boxing contender in the heavyweight division when there was record breaking purses every year after Tyson got released from prison, but if Afa could have broke David Tua into pro wrestling, he could have been the new Meng just cause he looked so badass. Height would have been issue cause he was probably 5'9 1/2" being nice, but if you thought Butterbean kilt Bart Gunn at Mania, Tua would have absolutely beheaded him. They would have at least gotten something out of a highlight reel KO instead of Bart Gunn getting sent to Japan and Butterbean becoming a super irrelevant boxer. Hell, 1999 Butterbean was already old news in boxing which makes it a bit weirder for him to get some time on Mania have to a real, legit shoot. If Vince really wanted to break into the boxing game, Tua would have been a great candidate to build a promotion behind.

I really need to get a wireless N64 controller and put VPW2 back on my SteamDeck. I love that game more than any of the American clones of the game. Tag matches are more tolerable in VPW2 than any of the WCW or WWF games, too. Which is huge for me, because I usually hate tag matches in wrestling games.

A quarterly Clash-esque big TV card is such a great idea in theory, but it’s been treated like an afterthought since the jump.

Jack Perry just needs TAZ to sing his entrance song. That's all I ask for.

Also, it’s wild that Omar from the Mars Volta showed up for Brodie’s party… Anyway, man, Daily’s Place is magical for bringing out the best in these videos.

More realistically he walks out because people didn't get paid for WrestleMania and PPVs back then for weeks, if not months, and there would be a lot of people who felt they got shorted on their pay for PPVs. Imagine Brody working WrestleMania 6 in April, not getting his check until July, it's half of what he's expecting... he's probably gone.

I feel strongly that the Kamala and Gonzalez feuds the Undertaker has in '92 and '93 would be, if not salvaged, at least far more entertaining if Mark Guleen were cutting promos on behalf of the heels rather than Harvey Wippleman.

"Couldn't" sounds like a challenge. Herb was to cocaine like Kobayashi was to Nathan's hot dogs. He couldn't be stopped.

how could Brody be sad when he would have access to all the cocaine that Herb Abrams couldn't snort

There is a good chance Brody, not really loving the insane WWF schedule, has had enough and just no shows an event at like the Mid Hudson Civic Center never to be heard of in WWF again. Just resurfaces in Puerto Rico and probably Global in the twilight of his career and pop ups in fan conventions and Cauliflower Alley every now and again.

Hence, the pushback. I think it was trying to do the googly eyes that did him in. No, I get it. I would have loved to seen Brody come in. There are several programs you could have insert him in after what would have been his passing. Also, you would start seeing a crazy amount of turnover every year so each year there is a fresh new crop of talent. I think my issues come down to Brody not being there before July 1988 and likely chose to squeeze out all the money out of what was left of the territories beforehand like other folks did. in addition, there is no guarantee that Brody doesn't get the treatment that Nord did or some bizarre gimmick that he ultimately turns down. You cannot assume he comes in as Bruiser Brody as we know and love. What's stopping Vince from making him like Giant Gonzalez and putting him a bodysuit with hair on it? Nothing. Let's say Brody tried to come in not in the 80s but like 90/91. He'd be old, but the standard of working in that time he could still get away with his style. They saddle Brody in some stupid gimmick and then they try to put him with Hulk Hogan when Hulkamania was starting to circle the drain. I don't see anything in my mind that works in that time period that wouldn't have worked better in five to eight years earlier when Brody was IRL alive and didn't work with Hogan. Remember when they tried to bring in Joe LeDuc, a big territory star and damn near the same age as Brody? He had probably the most forgettable WWF run of all time for a guy of his stature. Since you couldn't bleed buckets every night and Vince wasn't going to allow anyone to use weapons, he stunk the joint out. The Brody variable is fine especially if he's willing to do business, but it being the WWF in the late 80s/early 90s ran by Vince McMahon is the variable you need to worry about.

I can't believe we're in victory formation.

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.

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.

Raven/Saturn was great! I was a big fan of both guys when I was a kid* and this really hit the nostalgia button for me. Saturn had such cool offense that didn't become a real 'thing' until the workrate days of the early oughts. You see somebody bust out an Exploder or a Death Valley Driver back then, it was special. And Raven was great at selling and making a lot out of the least. Terry Funk mentioned that once, that guys like Scotty and Jake were the smart ones because they managed that while the guys that went all-out, like himself, were the dumb ones. This would have been ten times cooler if Scotty bladed off the bulldog into the corner of the steps, or if Saturn had crushed the table (laying there with the table over him was hilarious), but as it is it's great. Crowd was absolutely eating this shit up too! Bonus points for Nick Patrick taking what looked at first like a kick but on replay a running high-impact boot scrape/facewash. * I remember in school there was this kid Joe, nicknamed Jo-Jo, and while we were looking up wrestling pictures on the dial-up internet at school he told me about Raven putting somebody's eye out, which was a big deal to us. This is one of the reasons why I started watching WCW matter of fact, along with the hype about Goldberg. Before that I was strictly a WWF kid. EDIT: There's something I get now that I don't think I did when I was a kid and that's Saturn always looking like he just walked in from a leather bar. Beyond the piercings and tats, it was definitely the mustache. And how many copies of that damn Suicidal Tendencies shirt did Raven own?

Wait here's one more...

The numbers for 1/10 are out - the TL;DR is that it did a 797K average (overall down half a percent from last week) but the good news is that the demo was up 11.5% from last week: https://www.f4wonline.com/news/aew/aew-dynamite-homecoming-viewership-down-18-49-demo-rating-up

You know it is bad when Jimmy Johnson wants to choke someone out

sorry to tell you that the Cowboys have been disappointing the recently deceased for almost 3 decades in a row