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DVDVR: having correct opinions since you could smoke in restaurants.

Will you stop?

Nia has been so fucking good during this latest run. What an awesome bully cheapshot artist. She’s had a bunch of banger matches. (I actually didn’t see her against Ripley yet either.) Becky is always at her best when she gets to be defiant in her matches — I’m not a fan of Becky as the world beater best in the world, but she’s fantastic having to work from underneath. She’s been positioned this way during the past few months and it has really clicked for me. I think the match tonight is going to be a really fun brawl. Becky vs. Rhea absolutely could main event WM but understandably isn’t because of the absolute star power in the main events. I am also really intrigued by the Sami/Gunther/Gable angle. They have to get Gable involved. Sami getting the win was such a great and intriguing choice. What a great three years Sami has had with WrestleMania — the big (and pretty incredible) celebrity match, a Night One main event in the angle of the century (and just an all-time banger match, too), and now in the show stealing position against Gunther and very likely Chad Gable with him playing as “the other guy.”

I lost a lot of weight doing the Harvard step test/Brouha test, over four stone!

Although I preferred D'lo, I think Al Snow one upped him by dressing like different European counties during his entrances, including Grease and Transylvania. https://i.ibb.co/2tRvb4x/Jh-YN6t-FNK-k-U8-K-F8q-NBJEAof1-GX6ndw37-BWbt8jh-Q.jpg

Longing for the day when I hear Taz refer to Don Callis as a “fountain of misinformation.”

I'm also a high voter on the Brodie Lee era of the Dark Order. Especially that night he beat the shit out of Goofy Rhodes and took his coveted TNT title. His abusive relationship with John Silver, and love of Stu are also worth noting.

Raven’s flock in ECW was a nice play on the cult gimmick. Despite creative getting in the way during his Turner run, it kinda worked where it was allowed to, but mostly agree on the success rate of cult gimmicks. Long live Brandi Rhodes’ shitty Nightmare collective! Vincent wouldn’t be so bad as a corner man. Distaste for his in ring is probably more shared by the honorclub viewers. He’s incredibly inconsistent and often the opposite of crisp. Dutch on the other hand - sensational!

BTS with our very own @Phil Schneiderthis week!

Vincent gets a lot of hate here! I don't mind him at all, I just don't see the point of the cult gimmick in wrestling in general. I think the only time it was done well was with Sullivan in Florida, but that was at the height of the Satanic Panic and I guess his gimmick was "we're evil and don't care about winning titles, we just want to hurt your heroes." But ever since then, every cult gimmick has just stepped on its own dick as far as execution goes. That's just an inherent failing of the concept, though. Because really, in kayfabe, why would a cult want to be involved in a sport? Really, if you want to modernize the cult gimmick, then the flunkies have to lay down their lives so their leader can win the title, and the whole time it's really obvious their leader doesn't believe a thing about his own message and is just using them to get the belt and get rich.

Danielson needs a moment where he puts him in the Yes Lock and won't break, and they have to call down like ten security guys to break the grip, and finally Moxley backs him off, Danielson rolls away... and Mox drops down into Bulldog Choke so they have another ten guys swarm the ring and finally stretcher him out.

Nia & Becky in a Last Woman Standing match tonight on Raw! Also, Seth is gonna try, probably hilariously ineptly, to call out the Rock! The Road to Philly continues!

What I love about AEW is that we can get 2020s bombs away MOVEZ bangers like Ospreay-Takeshita and also sicko shit like Danielson-Shibata spending 10 minutes on the mat before chopping each other silly. Who the hell did BCC piss off to have to feud with the fucking Righteous and Archer (who has kinda sucked for a while now). Not in the tag tournament and having to see for the team that MJF beat singlehandedly. Also why is Yuta suddenly gone? I was really into O’Reilly and Keith, was interesting to see Keith work more as the dominant guy rather than the underdog. KOR might have the eye bags from hell but he’s trimmed up some from his last appearances. I like him, please keep him away from Undisputed. Julia-Adora was good, Julia was forced to do a lot more hit and run fitting for her size, took some bumps, and she nailed the moonsault. Main event tag was pretty fucking awful, I called Briscoe getting Infantry an upset win the second the brackets were posted. Garcia-Moriarty was a good look at the bright future of AEW. Also, Garcia was ROH Pure champion, so he’s had gold around the waist. Cope looked like he was going to blow an artery near the end of his promo, he was turning purple. Also thought he had cut himself with Spike when he first put it to his temple (and maybe he should’ve to really get it across). Spike is a very Canadian name, for all those DeGrassi junior high fans. Wednesday is once again practically a PPV with the live Rampage after Dynamite. Really excited for both women’s tag matches, Kingston-Okada, and the I Quit match.

This might be my favorite stupid chart ever

Did I miss the conversation surrounding Daddy Magic's promo on the Youchoob exclusive: 'Let's be honest - 97 DDP is the best DDP, right. So screw it just wear some jeans tape the ribs let's go'. - Daddy Magic (A goddamn Genius) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNpKoavlPZ0&t=44s Here's this week's Post-Collision EXCLUSIVE(!!!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUPx87_E4Vk

Oh lord, I'll never forget Brandi's clumsy promo where she tried to explain the Nightmare Collective's role within the Nightmare Family. All she needed was a PowerPoint with an org chart.

So Tazz had a tattoo artist who became graphic designer for the WWE, he was on Brian Solomon’s podcast and he mentioned how Taz as a commentator paterns himself after Gorilla Monsoon

Great now do the state capitals!

At the risk of making people sadder: if Gorilla was still alive and upright by April 2001, I’m pretty confident it would have been Gorilla/Bobby for the gimmick battle royal But yes, there’s a “Gorilla Monsoon commentating on Don Callis” match out there too. I can’t find it on YouTube right now but it’s a Kurrgan match.

Pets are family. Pets are more family than the family you sometimes have.

OY LOIKE HOW BEW'IFULLY BROKEN YEW AH or some such Joker and Harley nonsense. Oh god fuck this movie. Eric and Shelley are supposed to be decent people who live in a shit neighborhood, killed at random. Not whatever all this is. Honestly, just change the names and make it a continuation of the Crow mythos and it's fine I guess. But yeah, this looks like shit.

I may be wrong, but I think Fenix got fairly lucky with that arm injury in that it was "just" a break. I don't think he had any tendon or muscle damage or anything like that. God, that looked bad when it happened, though.

I can't get on DM on Google, but wasn't that a house show match on a Schneider comp? Funny that the funniest part of the dirty Brain and Gorilla was relatively tame (Gino saying "Good, because he sucks!" ).

Finals are set as Tsuji and LIJ finally got the best of EVIL and Goto beat SANADA. Tsuji and Goto have never met one on one and even then Tsuji only has one win out of a number of tags (mainly six-mans). Since the beginning Naito has been waiting for either Tsuji or Takagi to get through to face him at Sakura Genesis. On the other hand, Goto is Mr. New Japan Cup, having been in the finals six (now seven) times and winning three..but his last visit was eight years ago. And also the announcers played up his father passing away earlier in the year a bit.

In Indianapolis of all places.

Cam Newton, arguably

Sorry if this has been mentioned before, but I just watched Ikuto Hidaka versus Super Crazy from ECW on dailymotion. It's a 7 minute file including entrances and a commercial break and it's still the most action-filled awesome match of all-time. I would accept pay to watch it for the rest of my life. Holy cow, those two... ECW SuperCrazy vs Ikuto Hidaka - video Dailymotion

Just to drop in on the cartoon talk a bit, I had a flashback to the Inhumanoids and looked up that toy/cartoon series, and found out it is a crazy in-depth Japanese production mixing ecological concern with dark sci-fi and elemental-spirit concepts. They showed scary stuff like people melting and transforming into monsters in a very grade school level cartoon series and it's wild; the whole thing's on Youtube.

LOVED his gimmick as European Champion as being announced from a different city in Europe each appearance. his 2003-2004 run in TNA was surprisingly good, too. He comes in, cuts what is now the standard "i'm going to show [the previous company i worked for] that they didn't know what they had" promo. He seemed motivated in his matches to prove that.

March…..Maaaaaad……nesssssssss……

Pretty big get to offset whoever is leaving for Rossydom. She's been one of the top freelancers the last few years.

Gorilla Monsoon almost commentated the entire Vince Russo WWF era

So what people were hoping Krakoa would be when "Get preggers" was the national motto and Scott, Jean, and Logan had a throuple room layout with the implication Scott was also hooking up with Emma on the side. I think Wells run is...fine. I get what it's going for and a lot of the critiques it gets, I don't think are super valid. That said, I hate how so many runs are being built around teasing MJ and Peter getting married again only to yank the football away, Peanuts style at the 11th hour. I've accepted that they're never going to do MJ/Peter as *that* kind of thing again and that broadly, modern Peter stories don't do much for me because the attempts to give him trials similar to when he was 16 or 21 at like 30-35 make him look like a very different kind of loser. As maddening as the drive to status quo can be for characters like Batman or Superman, for Peter it just really makes him feel like a manchild after a point. I'd much prefer him getting to become something like what Superman is now with the wife and kid and let Miles be the Spidey for young people, but editorial is determined that it can't happen so here we are. What sucks is that with this specific run and New 52 Superman both, instead of having the former "True" love interest just...move on and be a character in a different way, they create tension by pairing them with a character who seemingly exists just to make the reader mad that they're dating the former romantic lead instead of the protagonist. The determination to write it in this weird kind of cuckold by proxy way just makes it annoying and harder to actually move on from things. People were less hung up on MJ during Brand New Day when the focus was on Peter doing new things and MJ being a supporting character. Slott kept that going, but Spencer seemingly tried to get Marvel to flag by setting stuff up (similar to what Tynion and Snyder successfully did with Cass Cain, Spoiler, Tim as Robin, and to an extent, Oracle) but they didn't. That said, they saw the news articles and sales going along with the speculation and now we can't escape this, with Beyond and now the Wells run both using it as a core element. I don't think Wells is the problem on this, but that element of his run and the *bizarre* choice to kill Ms. Marvel in it are overshadowing the good and interesting stuff in there. (like the Norman stuff, the gang war, the Black Cat stuff for a bit, etc) My concern is that they'll throw a new writer on it and a lot of the same problems will just still be happening. It is what it is though. I can always read older stuff I've missed, Ultimate Spidey, or Miles/Gwen/Silk/etc. books which still hit the Spider vibe without the baggage. Gail's Tomb Raider and Red Sonja both got a lot of love at the time. It just depended where you were plugged in. Red Sonja especially was the first run in YEARS to get attention beyond its usual audience and the Swords of Sorrow event that spun out of it was one of Dynamite's bigger licensed successes. She did a really fun Domino series too which had similar energy to her Secret Six run. She also did some indie stuff like Crosswind and Leaving Megalopolis which caught some immediate press but got lost in the 2010s Image explosion or Seven Days which didn't get a ton of promo because it was part of the Catalyst Prime launch that sort of fizzled. Otherwise she's been doing small bits and pieces here and there while getting more TV gigs and apparently doing a lot more video game stuff. She's still as good as ever, and I'm excited to see her working on a bigger scale project again after a few years of experimental stuff and playing in other mediums. EDIT: I forgot Clean Room, which was one of the best Vertigo books barely anybody read and tbh is a top 5 work from Gail imo.

Speaking of SMW, my 1995 continued on as I watched the 3/18/1995 episode for SMW. It may be the most random and also unintentionally entertaining hour of wrestling. First off, Bullet is strangely missing from the show. I am guessing that's going to be explained next week or he just failed to make it in. Either way, I think it was a SMW requirement to have Bullet Bob all over the goddamn show. Second, this is the beginning of the Undertaker vs. Gangstas stuff and New Jack once again proves he is the promotional MVP by his amazing sell of this announcement of the Undertaker coming in. The return and inclusion of Killer Kyle in the Gangstas is weird, but whatever. I want ALL OF THIS. Ok, now that said, it does feel like the promotion is not on a death march as it is they are stuck in a serious rut. God bless the dead, but Buddy Landell is trying several different acts and none of it is working. Ole's kid disappeared after getting a push. Al Snow and Unabom are basically doing what Candido and Brian Lee did the previous year right down to Snow doing commentary while Unabom is wrestling 2-on-1. DWB is stuck in the Landell Vortex of Mediocrity™. RnR Express are somehow feuding with Al Snow and Unabom but also feuding with the Gangstas. However, since Undertaker is a "real" star, a WWF guy is basically taking their place along with Smothers against the latter. Bobby Blaze is SMW champ just so they could get the title off Lawler and also get a hometown pop beating both Lawler and Landell the same night. Except now it's weird to have an enhancement talent being your main champ unless you've already done the pre conditioning ECW did with Whipwreck where his gimmick is he takes ass whippings and backdoors into a win. And oh yeah, I am going to need someone to explain Bad Boy Billy Black showing up in SMW, getting a big push for 3-4 weeks, winning the Beat the Champ TV title over Boo Bradley, and then apparently walking out of the promotion. Has Cornette ever explained what happened? I saw that he was one of those guys who worked from time to time in Japan, but he doesn't have another match again until early 1996. Was he hurt?* Did Cornette not have enough money to afford the services of one Bad Boy Billy Black? Here, Killer Kyle replaces him on the show against Boo Bradley and apparently that's the last of Billy Black. WHY DIDN'T HE FINISH THE STORY?! Now I don't even get a payoff for this one guy carrying a bag around with this mysterious creature for weeks like a Dollar Store Jake "The Snake" Roberts. *Prior to Boo Bradley vs. Killer Kyle, New Jack exclaims the reason for the substitution is that Bad Boy Billy Black "was taking a shower, slipped, and fell in his own tobacco spit". I am guessing that's just going to have to suffice as my answer for right now.

Hey, it’s me! I’m just here to make @Matt D watch Seth Rollins matches. (I’ve never read any of the road crew reports, or any of the main website stuff. I only found this place when I was a teenager because I followed dev the clown here to troll him back in the eyesore green board days)

I like how it implied that Horner's opponent was always his husband and he was gonna murder him on account of all the cheatin'.

Okay, I guess the SNME style opening is gone for good. Goodbye, you beautiful multi-person promo segment set to music - you are sorely missed. No Elton now either? Hopefully just this week, right? Complaints end with the outstanding Shibata v Danielson bout. What a lovely little scrimmage! I need another term for 'Poetry in Motion', but these two are definitely poets, so seems fitting. Mercedes video package was good. Julia v Adora was alright. Adora's looking better and better every week. Loved the bend. Julia mostly looked fine, but I'm not sure what that rope assisted maneuver was supposed to do. Poor Trish having to sell that k-rap. Speaking of crap, did I hear a stip that only one of the two would get to stand ringside? In theory it's fine, but don't make me think about the illogic. Zak Knight/Ange segments were highlighted by Harley Cameron's hilarity. She needs more to do. So what was going on here - an undisclosed injury? Dragon going long? Definitely down with the latter. Just move it to Honorclub and tape it - Pay Per View baby! Daniel Garcia v Lee Moriarty was terrific for the measley 5 minutes it received. Dragon going long? Darby-Jay Video was good. I continue to be elated by Jay White escaping the Acclaim vacuum. Pac v Aaron Solo was a terrific showcase. Solo did a helluva job here. I was hoping to hear some words from the Bee-ass-tard. I had a teacher that oddly called Basketball 'Bee-ass-ket-ball'. Danielson promo was very good. Meditation, being grateful, that's a play I can back. Claudio v Archer was a bit of snooze in the middle there. I blame Lance entirely. He seemed to be working a WWF house show in 83. Claudio, on the otherhand, brought his consistent excellence, and things clicked at the start and down the stretch. I'd prefer they saved the DQs, but I kinda sorta liked this finish. AEW has made the DQ fun again. Vincent should never, ever get an upper hand on Danielson. Big Dutch showing the gross tongue. Okay, let's do a trios. Maybe afterwards more ppl will be on board with Willing Coach to put together Dutch/Archer as a regular towering team. I really liked Kyle O'Reilly v Bryan Keith, but I definitely hear the criticisms levied on the overall show number of strike exchanges. I liked the closing and KOR's uncertainty about his old friends. Let's do Roddy v Kyle for the strap. Really liked the Deonna/Rosa promo. Always like Deonna's promos, but Rosa was good there too. I'm kinda into a heel Rosa. House of Black v Infantry was a beautiful showcase for the House. Matthews/King looked like a pair of killers. Carlie Bravo and this team have come a distance from their Honorclub debut early last year. Felt bad for the Captain on the botch, but he pressed on like a pro. Ottawa was very polite about it all. Cap seems like he deserves some votes for best dude in the company. I kinda like the finish. I don't like that they did an angle with FTR last week to make the outcome here kinda obvious. That said, all match I was trying to think of how the Infantry were gonna win. I thought for a moment that the House might get counted out on the table top piledriver. Somewhere around then I remembered the Briscoe feud. Malakai v Mark sounds pretty fuckinfantastic. Adam Copeland Interview was pretty good. It wasn't drippy. I could've done without him using the word 'perform'. I hated his use of that word. A stick with spikes, alright. Good use of Foley's name in 2024. There was some good to great mat action on this show, but some week's Collision has the feel of a pre-empted taped Raw circa mid-90s. I don't see too many Colliders on the board anymore. I guess nobody prefers the B show presently. That's not a good sign. Still, there's always a Danielson masterpiece, so I'm grateful.

There's no reason we can't make the news again. I'm not gonna start the "Steve Maclin > Cody Rhodes" thread but I'll post in it.

I agree, thought he was going to develop well in to a solid babyface from the looks of things, but of course now he's gone in the complete opposite direction. Interested to see the new character/direction, I hope he does well when he starts in ring. Also agreed with everyone else's comments on the tag tournament. Was wishing for something as close as possible to the Crockett Cups of 86-88 with the Sting connection. A small tournament especially considering the final isn't until Dynasty next month. the BCC is scheduled for CMLL next Friday on the 29th so we should find out for sure on Moxley soon. As for Fenix, he had re-aggravated an old injury when he went out back in October after the quick title loss back to Orange. He did an interview while in LA a couple months ago and said he was dealing with the worst injury of his career but that recovery was going well.

It was lost in the Picture in Picture segment, but Carlie Brovo is absolutely from the Ricky Steamboat school of selling. It’s glorious. Some people sell for the back row. This dude was selling for the back row in some other city. They initially announced the House Rules match as an “Open House” match and I immediately thought about Julia and Adora battling throughout a house for sale while a realtor frantically tried to stop them.

Backlund after demanding Masakatsu Funaki do the Harvard step test and name state capitals in alphabetical order

Austin/Rhodes best of three falls at Starrcade and Sting's Squadron vs. Dangerous Alliance War Games would be on that top ten list for me.

They don't really need to split the titles, just like we don't need split world champions. WWE booking has made it clear we know who the real world champion is, and it's not Seth Rollins. Even when they revived the World Heavyweight Title, they at the same time branded Roman Reigns' belt with UNDISPTUED on it. It's the same with the women's division. Rhea Ripley is treated like the true star and face of the division. Iyo Sky is not treated with the same prestige. WWE worked just fine with part-timer Roman Reigns as the undisputed champion for over a year. It proved we didn't need two world champions. And if they wanted split tag titles, they never should've unified the belts in the first place.

So I finished Deus Ex: The Conspiracy(the PS2 port of Deus Ex) and have to say it was a fun little game. I really liked the storyline, choices, and the feeling like you could do anything at any time. It is a game that undoubtedly is probably better experienced on the PC but they did a pretty good job of simplifying things for the PS2. Probably the only big complaints I had were that the skill/augmentation system felt a little useless at times, the lead-up to the ending(s) being a bit anti-climatic, and the load times between sections being a bit annoying if you got lost or had to back track. There's part of me that wants to try another playthrough but I think I'd be more inclined to do it with the PC version than the PS2.

I thought because it was STING'S RETIREMENT that triggered the belts being vacated that they'd really want to go out of their way to have a big, special, memorable tournament. That and they never vacate belts. I would have liked 16 or 32 teams and you can play up the March Madness aspect. Feels like such a no-brainer and TNT/TBS carries the actual NCAAs. On the other hand I get maybe not wanting to devote so much TV time to tag team matches when they're debuting all this new talent and already struggle to get everybody on tv. The first rd. would be full of teams that are never on TV. You could split the difference, put some first rd. matches on Youtube to drive some traffic there. Do it Crockett Cup style, give a few teams byes, make it a bigger deal. Just feels like a missed opportunity to do something special. AEW really hasn't had the best track record when it comes to traditional tournaments

I’m higher on Valley Girl than almost any of the movies mentioned so far. Years and years ago I got to go to a screening of it at Lincoln Center that had a Q&A with director Martha Coolidge and the Valley Girl herself, Deborah Foreman, hosted by Kevin Smith. It’s fascinating how fully formed Nic Cage already was as a performer; he brings his whole dog and pony show to a teen romantic comedy and elevates it with new wave bizarreness. It’s also really fun to see a young Michael Bowen as a preppy douche and a scorching hot E.G. Daily. Plus, Frederic Forrest and Colleen Camp are one of the first examples of hippie burnout parents in 80s media, almost a prototype for the parents on Family Ties.

That looks like a movie I will enjoy. That looks like a John Wick movie. It's violent and it's action packed. It's just not a Crow movie. I equate a Crow movie with a certain ambience. A real dark and cinematic vibe to the cinematography. It's not bright. It's dark. It's wet. It's a rain drenched limited pallet visual. It's goth. This doesn't have any of that. I get that updates for new generations need changes that add to the mythos. But the gothic dark almost black and white nature of the original is the vibe that audiences flocked to and basically THE identity of The Crow. This looks like a well done fun action flick. But it doesn't feel like it fits in The Crow mythos at all. The dialed back face paint. The tattoos. The soundcloud rapper vibe of Eric Draven's look. They were aiming for Ledger Joker. They got Leto Joker. I expect Skarsgard to elevate it beyond the output we got from Leto. This will be well done. It will probably even be good. But this doesn't feel like The Crow. Ledger still felt like Joker... even if he was a new take on him. Brandon Lee's appearance was almost ghost like. A methodical gothic ghost out for vengeance against the baddest the streets had to offer. This just looks like a mad Twitch streamer sticking it to corporate America.