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People marking out about belts and I'm over here just happy that Eddie Kingston is having a 3 year run where he has, like, every concievable Kingston dream match one after another. What a fucking ride, man.

Last night was so much fun! Got some pretty good comped seats thanks to my bro and board alum Rob Viper The past 2 Toronto shows, I've seen Okada/Danielson and Okada/Kingston. So freaking cool. Okada pulling up in a 'rarri?? Even cooler. Okada vs Pac? ICE COLD. Jericho/Hook was aight. Curious to see where this goes next week. Swerve was OVER. HUGE. With all these new stars on the scene, Swerve/Joe may steal the show at Dynasty. And it was great seeing THE BUTCHER. Really love Thunder Rosa. But she really showed how much the interest has dropped in Deonna in only a few weeks. Wouldn't mind seeing a Rosa/Deonna feud. And Toni and Mariah are sooo good. I want to watch this match back on TV tonight.

Fulfilling the impossible wish of being in your 30s and still having four friends that can get together regularly.

Terry Gordy helped give us the Gambler

I know Miro is single now, but he still won’t fuck you.

Cope and Christian was WILD. And the crowd loved every minute of it. They got alot of time to have a crazy one on one brawl before the shenanigans started. It's nice to see babyfaces outsmart the heels every now and then lol.

I could beat up Roderick Strong. When he goes for a backbreaker he’ll discover I don’t have a spine. Quick roll up, I WIN

Eh, they’re a midcard team that can be used for either funny moments or a needed mid show feud. I can respectfully see not liking them (Chuck Taylor might be an acquired taste). RAMBLE: Maybe I’m fond of them being the thing that made me smile in the original AEW. More so than the JungleSquad or Private Party. I really feel connected with Best Friends. They don’t really need to do much (I’d like a thanks for your service title run but…) I’m just happy they’re still there to make me smile. For body shapes, I know this is a tough topic. I like how OC is skinny and wrestles a unique way to take on the big bullies and sexy athletes. I love how I could see me having a spicy chicken sandwich with Chuck Taylor after he Awful Waffles someone. I’m nowhere near them in actual shape, but I relate to them and maybe subconsciously cheer them on because of it. They’re also willing to be silly. Don’t take life to seriously and I can relate to that. In a brawl I’m sure they’d get beat up pretty good but at the same time I wouldn’t count them out. They got whatever It is. I also like how AEW has groups that support each other, I don’t watch New Japan much but it’s how I assume they operate. Even hip hop. Tupac has the Outlawz, 50 Cent has G-Unit, Busta Rhymes has Flipmode, Eminem has D-12, etc. It’s cute seeing Orange Cassidy and Statlander have the Best Friends. Willow and Danhausen are like Wu-Tang affiliates Redman and RA The Ruggedman. Yuta leaving was cool. I wish more happened with it, but I remembered that was fun. They really helped established Yuta’s personality before his full on BCC dickish antics. I forget the specific match, but I love the shot of them walking up the ramp completely bloodied and dazed after a victory. It just felt like AEW and I was so happy to see it.

I like how Hobbs tried to pin OC immediately as payback for his 8-second loss to Cassidy on Dark when Hobbs was starting out in AEW.

I think along with of the wackiness of the Arcade match, the street match protected PnP by having Orange Cassidy make a surprise attack out of the truck of a car. Thinking on it, Best Friends have usually been presented as underdogs or at least not the dominate force of a match until someone outside from Chaos or something joins to even things out.

Eddie is like the last guy left who can make me go full little-kid mark, angry when he loses no matter how good a match is even as I approach 50. That was a phenomenal match, Okada/Pac is going to be a phenomenal match. But the King better get his win back.

Went on the Ringer Masked Man show, to talk AEW and DEAN~! https://www.theringer.com/2024/3/21/24107995/wrestlemania-xl-fantasy-draft-with-phil-schneider

There isn't a bad seat in the entire Coca-Cola Coliseum. Nice view over there. Natch, you're a kind gentleman. Yes, I absolutely did have a great time. Here's what I saw and felt... Caps lock TK promo prior to the countdown. Mercedes promo to kick off the show. No, I won't chant 'CEO'. The crowd reaction was good, but a bit milder than you want after a week. Throwing to a video of herself? Ugh, please turn her heel - I promise I'll like her in that role. I'm not at all into putting weird heat on Willow, but I am patient enough to see how this plays out. I was not at all a fan of this lame opening segment, but I suppose it served its purpose. Bucks/Okada promo was tremendous fun. Alex Marvez has found his best role. We noticed that Ferrari on the way into the building. Everybody riding in on the 511 saw it too. Eddie v Okada was spectacular. Our section was dealing with some kind of offshoot of the Cult of Cornette determined to get himself over at the expense of Okada. It was kind of amusing to imagine how this obnoxious malcontent makes his way thru a day. It was easy to imagine some beatings he's received. Adjustments were made, and I loved this match as much as the arena. Great heat! Eddie Kingston is a total pro, and made Okada here. And heel Okada is one of the best things in pro wrestling right now. Bucks on production were tremendous. Okada v Pac! Swerve promo was good. I really dug Jericho v Hook. Truly selfless performance from Lionheart. I also like the prospects of a heel turn - I suspect that's where that promo was leading? Great showcase for Hook. Adam Cole promo was fine, if a bit corny in it's telegraphing of the future. Does Wardy and MJF reunite out of this nonsense? Will Ospreay promo was how ya do it. Maybe Mercedes was paying attention? Toni/Mariah v Thunder/Deonna was a slight affair, and a bit disappointing for that reason. I need to rewatch this. Did Rosa no sell the best move in wrestling? I'd love for Mariah to find a way out of the cosplay. It's been fun and all, but I much prefer her own presentation. Swerve v Butcher was a nice surprise. Very pleased to see Butch, and he gave Swerve a nice showcase. Slight points taken for his bad moving into position (hopefully not caught on TV) for the stomp, but let's forget about that. Excellent promo segment with Joe and especially the always top notch Don (NUCLEAR HEAT for that treat). Christian v Adam Copeland was so fun to be in that arena for. Great, great heat! A lot of the actual match was out of my view (I don't like looking at the screen), so I wanna take a look at the televised version before offering too much opinion. I wasn't crazy about the overbooked finish, which I did see, but it was too fun to complain. I also wanna see the Jay White/Asses promo which I mostly missed. It sounded fun. The Acclaimed promo on the otherhand. Ugh. It felt like a long lecture from a pair of blowhard goofs. I really want these guys to get on track, but that was awful to have to sit thru. OC/Trent v Fletcher/Hobbs was a total darkhorse for match of the night. All 4 pros. Fletcher and OC had some beautiful looking exchanges. Hobbs continuously powerslaming Orange on the lip of the ring was amongst my favorite spots all night. Loved this match! Shibata squash was an absolute treat. Very much looking forward to Ospreay v Shibata! Missed the Copeland celebration. Takeshita v Rocky was really good until the Blue Thunder Bomb nonfinish. Such a bummer, but not enough for me to forget my enjoyment prior. Rocky's a great hand, but whomever made that call failed as a producer. The hot crowd was ice cold for the beginning of Stat/Willow v Julia/Skye. Only caught the beginning. Exhaustion was setting in, so my lady friend and I hit the bricks to beat the rush out. I've heard good things tho. I'm gonna play it back today hopefully, but I got a matinee date to get to with Turkish master Nuri Bilge Ceylan and his 'About Dry Grasses'. Anyway, yeah, I loved the live experience of this show. Definitely worth @DEAN's patented 'AEWrulesthemotherfuckingworld'. What a card shaping up for Quebec City!

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It's always a treat to get to see SHIBATA wrestle in person. So jealous of Quebec City next week. That was a fun squash. Rob was shocked that Rocky made it to Toronto, given he had wrestled in Mexico City the night before. And he had a super fun match with Takeshita, although Rocky may have got a little too much. The catch on the 3rd dive was DOPE tho. I was kinda shocked that Best Friends won the tag match. Shocked in a good way. Hobbs is a freaking beast. Loved that he busted out the Torture Rack. The street fight was kinda insane. I feel bad for the ladies that the had to do a street fight after the I quit match. But the gave a spectacular, wild performance. All In all, a phenomenal night of pro wres. I'm going to Collision in London too....hopefully TK hits us with some more of the good good!!

Well, they were seeking $800m to $1.6 billion. Had they won, there was a possibility they would have been awarded triple what they were seeking. Problem is...everyone knew the plaintiffs had a very tough hill to climb (proving the UFC was suppressing wages through oppressive contracts). When the lawsuits were filed in 2014 and on, they were trying to use not only UFC business records from recent years at that time but important competitor business information. I remember Bellator wanted no part of that. Vehemently against. However, as the years wore on, what helped the UFC's case is the fact that free agency largely started to shift. IMO it didn't change much because the free agents largely weren't big enough names to stop the UFC's momentum. However, you had the emergence of Bellator as more of a competitor than usual once Scott Coker took over for the ousted Bjorn Rebney, you had WSOF which is the present day PFL on ESPN, and you had ONE FC out in Asia which spends a hell of a lot on MMA free agents (former UFC and Bellator fighters) and homegrown talent in MMA and kickboxing/muay thai. You had all these Bare Knuckle promotions start up, which pick up a bunch of past their prime UFC/MMA fighters as well as folks like a Mike Perry or Paige VanZant who had notable mildly successful runs in the UFC. A lot of those folks got good money AFTER they left the UFC. So you can say that being signed to the UFC was crippling financially, but once that contract was over and you were free and clear, you had a chance to make the same or much more than what you made in the UFC. According to Paul Gift, who is one of the people who covered this for the longest, the plaintiffs were basically using models to prove that the UFC's wage share was unreasonable and unjust. The larger issue with that is once the UFC presents their evidence, everything is basically open to interpretation. You are asking folks to basically understand the inner workings of the financial side of MMA when people who have covered the UFC, MMA, and combat sports for a living basically don't understand the inner workings of MMA business (sound familiar?). The plaintiffs survived a few motions to dismiss and they had some victories in discovery, which uncovered what folks like Ronda, Conor, Brock, etc. made in the UFC. The UFC was putting a lot of their money though on proving the UFC was just one stop in a fighter's journey and that their business dealings were normal for how any major sports league operates. According to Gift, there was going to be some emails that come out or have came out from Dana and other Zuffa/UFC brass at the time which probably would have been ugly. However, based on my understanding, there was no real smoking gun or absolutely damning piece of evidence AGAINST what was formerly Zuffa and the UFC. They had enough to stop the lawsuit from being dismissed over the matter of several years, but IMO not enough to prove what from the outset they wanted to prove and that's UFC using fighters as pawns to intentionally keep fighter wages low. The fighters lose face in that a lot of the original goal was lost throughout the years. I mean how could it not when it just went on and on for almost ten years. They also lost basically two years due to the coronavirus pandemic. It also didn't help after the first year or so, no one covered it outside maybe three or four people on any substantial level for the better part of eight or eight and a half years. Every now and again, you would hear about a ruling on this or that in discovery. That was pretty much it up until the class certification stuff, which was relatively recent. However, I remember the day the lawsuit news originally came out in 2014. That was basically when the UFC was largely having a really rough time (some below standard PPVs due to a rampant injury bug, oversaturation, drug test failures/issues, fighter negotiations playing out in the media). You would have thought the MMA world was being shooked to its very core. Now? For it to finally end (the settlement still has to be certified) like this, I cannot think of a bigger victory for TKO and the UFC. The lawyers are going to get 1/3 of that money. The fighters are going to get the rest, but it's not exactly clear how that's going to be divvied up yet.

Every time I see Jericho's weave/plugs/otherwise fake hair get all sweaty and sticking out in all directions, I can't help but think of Bill Murray in Kingpin.

I hear the mind altering drugs hit you right in the cerebellum 'ellum 'ellum hey hey

I'm just so thankful for all the Star Wars stuff. I didn't hate the sequel series -- I really enjoyed the Last Jedi. I was disappointed they ret-conned everything in the Rise of Skywalker, but it wasn't bad bad. Just kinda disappointing. But I love Mando, Asoka, didn't hate Boba Fett (especially when they just focused on Boba), didn't hate Kenobi. Andor is obviously the shit, and Rogue One and Solo are the best of the sequel movies. Why are people so out to get Disney, Star Wars, etc. What have we become? Nobody hates Star Wars as much as Star Wars fans. We're all armchair bookers who get pissed when they don't do the thing we made them do in our heads. (There's probably a parallel to all the maniacs who want AEW to fail)

Pete Rose wishes he'd had the good sense to hire an interpreter.

Now this is interesting. 1. We still don't know why he didn't do the episode, because there's no way he wasn't approached. 2. How you could sneak Terry past Dok Hendrix in the back and in the front is beyond me. He had to have been on as much narcotics as Terry for that to happen.

I mean, it's been done:

Kenny Powers Mercedes Mone is coming back f_cking soon! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sY0X_n2fcw

James Harden doing James Harden things

The street fight was everything I expected and more. Props to all four women for killing it. So crazy to see Julia Hart now and think of the awkward cheerleader from a few years ago. Like what's going on between Mercedes and Willow. I can't lie. When Stat and Willow came out, I half expected them to swerve and smash her with the chairs lol so the Willow tease had me Mark out Deonna is so turning heel and I'm ready for it. I prefer her character evil. I can get behind a Toni/Rosa program.

I miss The Bunny for a number of reasons. That said, I liked the new entrance video for The Butcher & The Blade.

I was thinking the kickout-to-do-more-stuff of Rocky was silly too but was giving leeway because I thought it was a real nice sleeper match that will be totally forgotten. Tonight man... I dunno, I just spaced off looking at other stuff and eating dinner most of the time. I woke up from a nap exactly at 7 PM when the show started after I dropped around 4, so I'm just out of it (but hey I got a job I'm starting on Friday, so this won't be happening again... *sigh*).

Backstage Assault is incredible for just how difficult it is to overstate how bad it really was. Looked like shit, full of shit design ideas, controls that calling shit would be generous to, it really was the complete package. A hall of fame bad video game.

Aside from that, I really enjoyed Dynamite. I was a moronic doubter about Okada clicking on weekly American TV. But he’s smart and the audience is bought in. Happy to be wrong. I think Ibou of WP said he heard from someone in WWE creative (if I’m recalling this incorrectly, I apologize) that the pitch for him there was Gunther with subtitles, which sounded better than anything I could imagine AEW doing with him given the pace of these shows and how quickly things get moved on from segment by segment. My mistake, this rules so far. Some awkward moments in the Hook-Jericho match, but the right result and I’m glad they’ve followed up on Hook vs Joe. Hope this doesn’t go sideways like so much Jericho stuff. Bring on the E&C tag run in the near future.

In 3-4 months she’ll be in a barbed wire death match. Give it time.

She pitched to a video package in a show-opening promo. I might as well be watching pandemic-era Raw. What a strange choice.

Straight Time is so goddamned good.

What happened, BYU?

Not for nothing, but everyone should be very aware, the Pete Rose case changed. About 6-7 years ago, baseball was ready to welcome him back ...then he was (credibly) accused of having initiated a sexual relationship with a girl who was under 16 in 1973. (Age of Consent back then was 13.) And that story keeps popping up whenever he shows up anywhere, and he keeps having worse and worse reactions, for example... https://www.citybeat.com/arts/pete-rose-on-statutory-rape-allegations-who-cares-what-happened-50-years-ago-13626759 So, while this started with him just being a gambler (who probably bet on his own team), it's not that any more. And yeah Pete Rose is never getting in while he's alive. And then probably not for a long, LONG time afterwards.

The change of story is a bad look and will fuel the takes for weeks, if not months, But the main thing is that within baseball gambling is synonymous with one person and people are still fighting and will keep fighting about Pete Rose until he either gets into the HoF or the heat death of the universe. There are people on twitter (I know, I know) who already want Ohtani banned for life.

This Mercedes booking is really starting to remind me of when Saraya came in. Massive initial pop. Sustained follow-up reaction. But Mone single=handedly fighting off the TBS champ and Skye Blue, hinting at Willow (who should pretty much only be face...and get some better theme music while I'm at it!) turning on her, then getting in Willows face reminds me of the crowd completely turning on Saraya. Also, it's really funny to have Mone and the announcers having to talk about Willow injuring her when it was my understanding she slipped off the turnbuckle, right?! I would be down for a heel Mone with Stokely Hathaway doing her promos for her though. Also if you don't know hockey, that spot in the penalty box probably didn't make a ton of sense to you but there's a fair amount of backstory to the Toronto-Boston feud that explains why the crowd went nuclear when the the good guy not only put on his hometeam jersey but put the Bruins jersey on the bad guy. It was like 15 years of hockey disappointment being let out at once!

I realize this is your schtick when it comes to Cole, the Bucks, etc. but it’s just such a weird fucking take. As a 42 year old relatively beefy guy, there’s plenty of dudes I don’t find “imposing” or “intimidating”. Top Flight, Kommander, Fenix, Swerve, to name a few. I sure do like watching them wrestle though. Not being a fan is fine, whatever, different strokes, but having that reason being because you wouldn’t be scared to fight them is really bizarre. It’s fake dude.

If I had a time machine I’d book a four way tag: Best Friends vs F.I.S.T vs The Colony vs The Dude Busters

I was just thinking about that this morning! Dude went from working possibly his last show, during Covid in some backyard and selling his boots, to wrestling Japan's top guy of the last decade on national TV. Good for him. Oh sweet Christ I hope not.

Thank for these. Glad you had a great time. Hope HarryArchieGus did as well.

Anyone who was asking before the show about Adam Copeland and blood, he had a couple of matches with Mick Foley (one vs Foley at Wrestlemania, one tagging with Foley vs Terry Funk & Tommy Dreamer on a WWECW PPV), that were all blood and barbed wire and FIRE. He was well on his way to becoming the best Mainstream Hardcore wrestler on the scene, and then the PG era started. EDIT: I've put both matches in Blood Sucking Freaks, if you're interested.

How the fuck was the tombstone->Blue Thunder not the finish for Takeshita/Romero? It would have been perfect, and having Romero kick out only to lose to something less impressive was silly. That's something you should either lose to or kick out of on the way to winning. There are at least 13 people furiously cranking the weasel over the close up of Statlander's back full of tacks, and I hope I never meet any of them.

Bring the Bunny back and let her teach Skye how to blade.

They killed my man the King of Diamonds, but it was every bit as gorgeous as I expected. The main was fuckin fantastic too.

"将軍が来る日が来ると思ったのに!"

You know, there’s a whole ‘nother wrestling promotion built around god fearing all-American themes of rugged individualism, bootstraps, and friends just being people waiting to stab you in the back. Vince is gone but his recurring themes are still around.

It was stupid when it was in Japan and stupid when it was in Australia, too. I'm all for spreading the game, but I'll never understand a start time that's 3am local time for both teams.

My theory is that they reintroduced the rankings before they realized that Dark and Elevation were load-bearing for those to work.