Leaderboard

Well at least we know how the koalas got the Chlamydia.

THANK YOU!!! Somebody FINALLY pointed that out! God, I hate it when I see those and when it pops up on the screen with the wrestler names over top. It actually confused me in earlier years as to what it actually meant and, yes, I've always thought it looked like AWA too.

You either don’t care enough about wrestling and aren’t there for the right reasons or you're a mark who’s too into wrestling and doesn’t treat it like a business.

The problem is that, much like with John Milton's portrayal of Lucifer in Paradise Lost, the text added to the flag just makes Lucifer come off as a charismatic and loquacious being. That is the very last time that I will ever compare anything Milton wrote to anything Val fucking Venis wrote.

Meltzer made a great point the other day about how, generalizing here, real sports' athletes have such a different mentality than wrestlers. For the most part, athletes understand their worth to the team and expect to be paid accordingly. Wrestlers, on the other hand, mostly are just happy to be there and approach their job from a "this promoter took a chance on me" point of view. One recognizes their worth and demands things. The other feels like their success is all owed to someone else, instead of understanding that this someone saw value in their skills, something they could make money on. There's no doubt in my mind that Vince absolutely played this shit to the hilt his entire career and it's easy to see how Cena was absolutely Jedi mind tricked here. I'm sure he feels he owes his life to Vince and not his own talents.

Holy crap, it's a Malakai Black singles match.

Punk is a man of conviction but he has to put that to the side right now cause Tony Kahn and the Elite hurt his feelings

“Nobody gets higher than RVD” Tony Shiavone ladies and gentlemen and immediate cackling from Tazz and Ex

They should have someone be offended that they got included in Meat Madness. “Wait, what? Am I fat?”

I just landed in Perth. It's raining which is super rare for this part of the world. Should be an interesting out door show if this keeps up (which they're saying is unlikely by bell time, but looking at the forecast probably will stop about four hours before show time)

Cena seems to be obsessed with appearing to be the "good guy". Call Taiwan a country one second, apologize in Mandarin the next. Have to be loyal, stick by your psycho father figure, but don't get accused of victim blaming. Walk that thin, thin line. Post a lot of inspirational crap on X. Give your time to sick kids. Nobody would have a problem with making sick kids happy, right? Walk that line. That's what Cena's done his entire career. Why would he stop now? Im far more disappointed in Punk's response to this than Cena's. I never expected anymore from him.

"The skull represents the death of the holy and all Christians. The wings represent the Devil rising up from his seat in Hell to claim dominion over the Earth, and it's the colors of the American flag because that is where he will start his Unholy Kingdom, his eartly apostate being the professional wrestler Cody Rhodes."

I finally got to sit down and watch the entire Rumble PLE. It was a reminder that this presentation just isn't my jam. As chaotic, frenzied, and at times disjointed as AEW can be, it feels like a wrestling show. It's dudes with distinct looks and styles showcasing their wares. This shit feels like fitness models & Bronson Reed pretending to fight. I think the biggest downside to running everyone through the PC is that they invariably come out doing almost everything the same. There are some standouts in both Rumble matches, like Tiffany Stratton. I don't know that I've ever seen anyone scream "STAR" without doing a thing like she does. She looks like and has the athletic ability of a franchise player. She's fantastic. Bobby Lashley continues to defy the laws of time. Why is this man not champion of everything? He's the shit. I don't watch nXt, but Carmelo Hayes looks like he could be a dude for them. His look jumps off the screen. I'm a big Santos Escobar fan from his time in LU. I don't understand why he doesn't have a more prominent role on tv for them. He's a handsome athletic latino with great charisma, and I love the pairing with Angel Garza and Berto. There just aren't many people on the roster right now who do anything for me. It also feels like most of HHH's nXt re-hirings are DOA. No one gives a shit about Candice LeRae, Tegan Nox, Karrion Kross, and a handful of others. Kross, in particular, just isn't working. That dude is like the movie Anaconda; on every level, that movie should've worked. It had a decent script, a good director, and a great cast. It still ended up sucking a fresh turd. Karrion Kross just isn't interesting. He's Bobby Fish in the body of Sid. At some point they should probably cut their losses. I hope they never break up Imperium. Like 60% of the WWE product I've watched in the last 4 years I've watched because someone was like "Hey, WALTER fucked somebody up on nXt UK." Ride that shit 'til the wheels fall off. The women's Rumble was pretty fun. It is crazy to me how many stalwarts from the last 5 years weren't in it. Carmella, Tamina, Nikki Cross, Rhea Ripley, Alexa Bliss, Charlotte, Sasha, et. al. I know there are varying legitimate reasons for their absence. It just serves as a stark reminder of how quickly the women's roster can turn over. Maxine Dupri probably needs more time. Naomi coming back was cool. She has one of my favorite entrances in wrestling. I don't share some corner's of the internet's excitement about the potential of TNA and WWE working together, but Jordynne Grace seemed ecstatic to be there and the crowd was happy to see her. Our paths have crossed a few times at powerlifting meets in Georgia and she and Jon have always been super nice to me. I'm of the opinion that the creative really isn't any better under HHH than it was under Vince, but I do enjoy how much more "zip" this Rumble seems to have. One of my biggest peeves currently in wrestling is this idea that Jade Cargill isn't "ready." Can she bump like Bayley? Fuck no. But asking Jade to bump more than twice a match is completely misunderstanding what you have with her. She doesn't need to work like everyone else because she isn't like everyone else. She looked like a Greek Goddess amongst the common folk while she was in the Rumble, and her manhandling (figuratively) Nia Jax was the only moment of the show that made me audibly react. What in the world do they think they need her to do that she can't do now? If she's gonna end up having weekly 8-10 minute matches like everyone else on the roster then Endeavor would've been better off lighting a match to the money they gave her. She can't be anywhere on the card but an attraction. Let Shayna Baszler and Zoey Stark have long matches to no reaction. Jade is there to draw eyes and do shit no one else can do. Neither Rumble winner was surprising. I know the rumor was that Bayley just re-signed, but I still don't think WWE really appreciates her the way they should. Her ability to get a TV match out of anyone is truly remarkable. She's gotten worlds better on the mic and this heel persona has been fantastic. She's become the class of the Four Horsewomen by a wide margin. In a fair and just world she gets the long title run in front of an audience that she's deserved for a while. Cody should "finish his story," but I'm still skeptical, mostly because I still think deep down that corporate image means more to WWE than any other deciding factor, and the Rock and Roman Reigns are both bigger stars outside WWE than Cody, and anyone who thinks that doesn't matter are kidding themselves. It wouldn't shock me if Roman and Rock were the story coming out of Mania, and it would shock me even less if we were to find out later that the decision got taken out of HHH's hands.

Looks like those kooky girls from Damage CTRL snuck onto the plane! So they've been added to the show, defending the women's tag straps against The Way (Indi Hartwell & Candace LaRae)

Exactly. He didn't know he was dealing with Austin Theory. See what he was accused of in 2020 for more info. Also, being essentially told "What you do for work and what you traveled 20+ hours to do here, is stupid." MIGHT be taken poorly.

Echo is actually pretty damn good, too!

Love this idea, and would love to see them able to do it over a live Friday/Saturday block like when they have Battle of the Belts to do it 2 night true Crockett Cup style.

It's the One Year Anniversary episode of Honor on HonorClub! Taya vs Sussy Love was a real fun opener this week. Thought Sussy looked great, loved some of her unique moves throughout. Red Velvet vs Sandra Moone was also awesome, good near falls and a great finish. Fun to get a rare Danhausen match. Abadon/Viva Van is another solid one. Some great looking matches setup for round 2. Billie vs Robyn ruled. Loved Robyn's sunset power bomb to the outside, looked killer. Robyn and AR Fox are the 2 people to compete on episode 1 and now episode 52. Nice promos from Aminata and Billie later on. This week's 4 corner survival was pretty great. Exodus Prime fit right in with Sydal, Fox, and Komander, everybody had some good shine. Main event was suitably epic for a feud blowoff. Nice drama throughout and loved the visual of them surrounded by tables before the properly brutal looking finish. Another excellent Athena defense.

This post incorporates like 3 running gags on the board at once

Wrestling media personality Matt Koon really stuck it to all around POS Val Venis today. Such a great move.

A friend of mine texted me about The Chisel a couple weeks ago and about 30 seconds into the first song I listened to I said “oh, they’re like The Business, ok.”

It's-a-me who said that. The entire card is on the Network as a Hidden Gem (also has a very good Valentine vs. Slater cage match on it), but I found the Flair/Steamboat match here.

Was happy to see Hornbaker win Best Book. Dont really care about the rest,.

Schrodinger’s ingrate

Or Hayes tried to smoke some eucalyptus leaves.

It’s prob one of the ways wrestlers are more like actors than pro athletes. So, you wonder about the people who went from being an NFL or even top level college player into wrestling, especially in the modern era.

Looking at how the business works it's no wonder that wrestlers have inferiority complexes in that regard. A talented young person in any sport is a hot commodity that may be treated sometimes too well (that they start to believe their own hype and don't work hard enough to reach their full potential - pro sports is full of such people), in wrestling the veterans will tell you that what you do is shit (and probably a lot of times simply that you yourself are shit) from day one, you have to start at the bottom of the foodchain and work your way up for years and years and years long after you might be ready for the top. At a certain point you will either quit or start to believe what you are told. You have to be very stable mentally not to end up with deep psychological issues. I am sure that the drugs and the alcohol are not just to treat the pain and because you are on the road a lot. I would assume even the biggest stars might take it hard when they are pushed away from the top. Flair is the most prominent example, but I am sure that he is not the exception but the rule here.

I’m surprised they gave a koala to Michael Hayes. I guess they figure that they could have snatched the bear back before Hayes got it drunk

The wrestlers formerly known as Bear Country.

These are terrific, and much of what I assumed they'd be. AEW would obviously benefit greatly from putting together similar packages for matches. Even a small amount context counts! Let ppl in on the secret. Especially with a meaningful cold match like Akiyama v Danielson. It's a blindspot that they don't. And a bit of a shame.

It's so weird and backwards because traditionally, you book it as the heel champ and face challenger have these tune up matches where the heel has trouble winning and has to cheat, while the face looks awesome and dominant. That way, the PPV match is built in such a way that the fans think the face challenger has a good shot at winning. Instead, Toni beats her opponent in two minutes with a clean submission while Deonna has an awful match against an unranked opponent and goes two segments before she wins. The "RVD and Hook smoke a lot of weed" jokes were all over the place. Taz said something about Joe being really tense and Excalibur said, "I bet Hook and RVD have something that can help with that."

Cody's neck tattoo has been the real mark of the beast this whole time???

Definitely Jeff Cobb. Maybe Meng's kid? He's more tall than meaty, though.

In Darkness... is a pretty legendary record to the anarcho community because along with Amebix it was basically the invention of "crust" (read: anarcho punks decided they liked Motorhead and Sabbath a lot). I find it for the most part extremely repetitive to a fault, though I've warmed to this (very cold) record over the years. Maybe the preachiest and most repetitive song, "Tortured and Abused", is actually the best one! Weird. They never got to make the second album which was bound to be the stylistic turnover that exploded everyone's head but there is evidence of it in their following EP and the live material, which is damn good despite the sound quality. Still though, they always felt like outliers to me, more of a 'missing link' band than anything. Conflict were good already, but would get better. The Ungovernable Force from '86 is the anarcho-punk high watermark IMO. "Epic" is such an overused term but the album truly is. If you're irritated by their politics then you might as well be listening to an Oi band instead because this stuff is almost a 60/40 if not more uneven split in what the band thinks is important, and that 60 isn't music. Funny enough that you review this and Death In June's first record is sitting right there too: An escapee from the peace punk/anarcho scene gravitating towards his enormous infatuation with fascist iconography but putting it into what would become known as neo-folk. I still don't know if Douglas P is legitimately a Nazi or not and that is to his credit for being able to keep the mystery so long. (His fans, not so much.) EDIT: Christ, I'm stupid... all it took was reading the DIJ Wiki to find out dude was in the National Front.

Thinking of smiling friendly Cody saying "My master wants to meet you. His name is Lucifer, you can call him Satan." with that exact look on his face is killing me

Alvarez update on Hangman Adam Page: "Hangman is not hurt. He worked an ankle injury. And the reason that he worked the ankle injury is because he has something going on in his personal life and he may not be able to work the pay-per-view. If he can't work the pay-per-view then this is the cover story as to why he can't work the pay-per-view, he injured his ankle. Virtually nobody knew about it and I don't know if even the people in the match knew that he was going to do this. There were people very close to Hangman who even this morning didn't know what was going on. I presume that him and Tony talked about it but I can't tell you that for sure. The point of the story is, he is okay. He may work the pay-per-view, he may not work the pay-per-view and I don't know if we're going to know whether he's going to work the pay-per-view or not until maybe the last minute. I don't know what the personal issues are but they are there and that's what's going on." --- Personal issues suck. More important than a wrestling match. Best wishes to Hangman Adam Page.

the world is full of terrible people. i hate that so many successful artists/creators are so awful. i can usually try to separate the art from the artist, but man, i wish that wasn't something that we all have to do.

So much for my "strong" legs. I can move 8 plates on the hack, but I can't get out of the bottom of a Bulgarian with a 35-lb dumbbell in each hand. Granted, my balance is SHEEEEEEEEEIT as Clay Davis would say, but still. It's fucking embarrassing to struggle with things like that. Did SMFFELs, 3 sets of 6 per leg with 100 lbs today, and I didn't feel like my cardiovascular system was going to shit itself and burst out of my thorax in the process, so maybe I won't die of Lunge-induced lung sadness just yet. I was definitely pushing through my back leg some to finish those reps, though; I wonder if I'd be at all better off dialing back the weight and trying for more reps, or if what I'm doing is good, since 8-10 reps even at 80-90 lbs will probably kill my overall fatigue to the point that everything else suffers. Then 3x7 of deficit RDLs at 195, then Nordics for the first time in months and months with the second-thickest band (I really need one in between that and the next one down, and 2 bands at once is a shitshow; next best hack is the thinner band but a weighted ball to brake against at the extended position), 3x5, then my attempts at Bulgarians. Ended up with just one dumbbell on the working-leg side and doing 2x10. I could probably go up in weight there. At least my legs still feel appropriately fried 5 hours later.

Botching a move badly and then getting that move highlighted after the match as Move of the week...

God, if this were WWE we'd have a camera following them to the restaurant in the car, them ordering their meal, the waiter spilling water on Ruby, Saraya showing up with the steak and smashing it in Ange's face, etc.

Folks have asked me how they can help with the show, we are looking for people to sponsor matches! So if you have something you want to promote reach out to Matt at [email protected]. Just let him know what you want to promote!! I was also thinking that we could have the board as a whole sponsor a match, if folks have some cash to spare we could all pool it and have a match be a "brought to you by the DVDVR board." One of the things I am excited about for this show is that we are bringing in folks who aren't the typical "Mania weekend guys working 10 shows" Demus and Slim J aren't working anywhere else Mania weekend, Thatcher is only working us and Bloodsport, and we have one more wild name like that we are working on, but could use some help with the plane tickets and hotel room. If you want to contribute to the group sponsorship, you can PayPal Matt at [email protected] or use Venmo or Cashapp, just put DVDVR Board DEAN~! sponsorship in the tag line. If we could raise a couple hundred bucks it would make it a lot easier to pull the trigger on this name we are working on

Depressingly, everywhere my money goes, whether for necessities or luxuries, seems to fund some asshole somewhere, so I'm somewhat inured. Only somewhat, though. I did ditch the WWE Network, but when they made a deal with NBC Comcast to put it on Peacock, I didn't cancel Peacock or anything. I'm trying not to go full Eleanor Shellstrop, but it's exhausting trying to dodge assholes and make sure not to fund them.

I wonder if Tony and the booking agents had to physically restrain Christian when Sting mentioned that his father passed away

I’m unleashing this song on you because I heard it on two different listener-supported indy stations today https://youtu.be/4tk5dyg4YNc (Sierra Ferrell - Fox Hunt)