Leaderboard

Tonight! Fenix is cleared!

Finally watching the pre-Dynasty Rampage. The way that Emi stooged at ringside while they checked on Yuka and let her try and walk off the ankle injury was genius. Grabbing an action figure and pretending to throw it to the audience, only to fake it out and cackle. Doing the same with the energy drinks, except looking in the camera, shaking her finger saying “Nooooo”. And then the match slows down, giving Emi a sustained heel control segment where Yuka could still hit an occasional hope spot, ending with her out of the blue through the ropes suplex for the pin. It’s always a joy to see Emi but this really showed just how great she is.

Whatever. That kicked ass. NFL network loved it, apparently. Fuck wwe. They harbored a sex trafficker for years. At least one. Triple H can find a spoon and eat my ass. I hope TK says that every day from now til eternity…

So I will only attend wrestling events if they are in one particular arena, because its close to my house, parking is easy, and I don't like going into DC. Well AEW is FINALLY running it in June for Dynamite so I get to go to my first AEW show, very excited.

Oh holy shit and fuck yes

Honestly, this Danielson AEW run has been my favorite in wrestling tv that I have luckily been around to experience. I truly feel lucky and will likely download all the matches to have on a hard drive and years later happily watch again. The Continental Classic came right when I was at my most negative towards AEW. That bought them a lot of time with me lol Eddie is a character I love dearly. His story in the classic was a true joy. Kingston made what I thought was an unneeded title into something I actually care about. I hope we get a cathartic Mic Foley winning the big one moment with him, but I could sadly see that never happening and the company pointing to this. At least we had this! The CMLL vs BCC was neat. It sadly turned into CMLL vs Jericho (like how Kingston vs BCC turned into a fucking Jericho feud) until the visa issues. Still fun though. BLUE PANTHER. I finally saw that. Super cool and I could tell Danielson was very happy. derp

I have been a fan of his since the first time I saw him on f'n Worldwide at 2AM in the white gear, but MY GOD he needs a 6-12 month Fozzy world tour in the worst possible way. He's always been great at reinvention, but I think part of why it usually worked well in WWE is that he would take these stretches of time off to make the audience actually miss him. I fully respect and appreciate the fact that he wants to try and use what gravitas he has remaining to further elevate the shows/promotion. I think anyone who enjoys AEW, whether a fan of his or not, is sort of "indebted" in that way. But he has missed something like one Dynamite a year this whole time since day 1 - I think he's wrestled the most AEW matches of anyone on the roster besides Mox (someone fact check me please). Plus he's in the booth on Rampage! All I'm saying is: lets take a breath or two before we go ruining Big Bill - why not slot Hager in that role and tie up some loose ends with the IC/JAS stuff??

Oh jeez. The Gastineau/Derrick Dukes fight still had effects in Virginia at least 15 years later. Okay! So in 2006, I was at a show as a guest. In Virginia, wrestling is regulated by the Department of Professional Occupational Regulation (which absorbed the State Athletic Commission sometime in the 1990s), but it's rare that the commission reps actually come to the show. You send them their cut, they occasionally threaten you with fines for something they didn't see, ob-la-di, ob-la-da, life goes on. This show, though, was in the afternoon and close enough of a drive to Richmond that they could be home at a reasonable hour, so sure enough, the commissioner was actually there. This group had a guy doing a MMA gimmick (it's 2006, UFC was red hot, makes sense, but he had credentials to pull it off), and he won his match with a rear naked choke. Easy peasy. No big deal. Except the commissioner FLIPS OUT and threatens to shut the show down. Why? Two reasons. 1) At the time - and I don't know if this is still the case or not - licensing for MMA was way more expensive than it was for wrestling, like ten times as much, and he didn't want people either thinking that they were coming to wrestling shows and getting MMA or MMA promoters licensing their fighters as pro wrestlers and claiming their MMA show was a pro wrestling show to have cheaper licensing. 2) The commissioner was the assistant to the commissioner alllllll the way back in the early-1990s when the Gastineau/Dukes fight happened, and remembered the uproar that happened. He didn't want wrestlers licensing themselves as MMA fighters and having fixed fights. So somehow that would have been prevented by pro wrestlers not using chokes or armbars in their matches, and by eliminating tapouts. Seriously, that was the solution the commission pitched; no chokes, no armbars, matches ending by submission couldn't be done by a tapout. Then WWE came to down like a month later and there were at least three matches that ended via submission, a tapout submission at that, and sure enough the commission backed off. But needless to say, that was a weird month. Damn you Derrick Dukes.

1947, it’s a somewhat major plot point in the Ms. Marvel TV show.

#WeStandWithTony

It’ll be a missed opportunity if AEW doesn’t use “Get Well Soon Tony Khan” as an opportunity to pad their mailing lists

Is Jericho just where AEW feuds go to die when they start petering out? "And here it lay, at home in its grave, at the feet of the reaper... the Widowmaker..."

Cornette's podcast is the only wrestling related pod I listen to,anymore. I'm guessing Brian Last has given up on the 605 Superpodcast, since a new one hasn't been dropped in over a year. A real shame, cause I enjoyed those a lot. I guess we'll never find out the true identity of Yomamba the Jungle Savage. I used to enjoy Between the Sheets, but Bixenspan is insufferable and just miserable to listen to. Zellner is cool, though.

I looooooved El Hijo Del Santo vs Negro Casas from 97. Very excited to see this thinking of it as build up. THANK YOU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94A3LwJT29w I was afraid that I'd go back and watch it and it would all be played out, but it's like a super workrate 92 Rumble if it had to simplify it. Everybody's there, there's a million stories going on at once that a viewer can just intuitively pick up on, and I think Flair compared to Santo/Casas as throughlines have enough in common.

Yeah, it could be a lot of different things. I don’t know if it is a sign of an axe about to drop because “WWE president sells stock before he gets his name tied up in an indictment connected to Vince McMahon” is an absolutely awful look for Endeavor and etc. It opens up the company to all kinds of possible litigation and liability. I would think people as sharp and media savvy as the Endeavor people would be on top of that from the get go. Endeavor’s bread and butter is its talent agency and one thing agents know how to do is to bury the bodies, so to speak. NK can’t just go on Robinhood and sell his shares of TKO. Since he’s a company insider, he has to disclose his stock shares to the federal government through the SEC (which is how it ended up in this article.) To so that means you have to file all kinds of paperwork and it’s a lengthy process. And that kind of stuff always triggers some kind of review from a company’s general counsel or the like who are going to want to know why someone wants to sell their shares, and they would absolutely asking about what Nick had heard about his name connected to Vince’s lawsuit, and they likely would already know the answer because the WWE is itself a legal entity in the lawsuit, which means TKO and Endeavor are, too.(Also, without looking to see what specific SEC filing it is, it also reads like Vince and NK now have permission to sell their shares, but it almost always happens.) The other scenarios: One thing that people worry about when an executive sells shares is that the executive knows something about the company’s future business and is getting out before the stock tanks. Being able to prove that level of trade on inside information is really difficult, but it always raises a lot of questions. (Or itself will trigger prices falling since investors will see that news and think something is up and will sell.) Or an executive could be in the process of landing a bigger job somewhere else. Or the exec could be feeling the fire if there was a shakeup on the board or he/she ended up with a new boss and they were not hitting it off or something like that. So why not sell now and get paid and then take off a few months later. But my main hunch: NK is selling almost 250,000 shares at almost $100 a share. The guy is turning his shares into about $25 million in cold hard cash.

This is deep. I'm gonna be pondering this for awhile, like a monk in a cave.

Oh OK. I thought I was being invoked to weigh in on some aspect of current AEW. (Sadly, in most cases my take is "I just don't care any more"). - Nope. - Nope - Nope - Nope. Definitely appreciate that you asked about "fun" matches. That's 100% my thing! I am honestly sick to death of darned near every wrestler constantly and self-consciously striving to work "great" matches. Could not possibly agree more with John E's excellent take on that subject above. The non-stop overkill and unnecessary risk taking has burned me right out. The last, camel's back breaking, straw was that ridiculous debacle of a "cage" match in Osaka. When Ospreay and company kept doing high risk moves on a bunch of exposed, uneven two by fours, something broke inside me. Haven't 100% been able to enjoy any pro wrestling since then. Don't want to leave it on that note, so: How about that run of singles matches Bryan has been on since December?!?! That whole Continental Classic run, putting Kingston over in the semi-final, Okada at WK, Nagata, HECHICERO, ZSJ in Osaka (the most beautiful professional wrestling, unfortunately followed up by the most stupid and ugly pro wrestling), Akiyama, Kingston again at Revolution, Shane Taylor, Shibata, Archer, Blue Panther in Arena Mexico (which I ain't seen yet), and Ospreay (which, I get why other people loved that, at least). Absurd. Insane. As great a run as any wrestler has ever had. And Eddie Kingston is still real, to me. And presumably Hayter is returning eventually. And I'm curious what Forbidden Door will bring, this year. Hopefully Jeff Cobb! And drinking with Cooger is still the best.

I just want to go online and talk about why a match was dope or why an angle was good or how much somebody bled. I don't care who's right or wrong. I don't crave a binary brand war. I don't think that us-vs-them internet arguments are the most enjoyable part of being a wrestling fan. TK would rather stir dumb shit up, HHH would rather lob hate during Mania weekend, every journalist knows talking about Punk or whatever other drama is hot is the more profitable choice. I refer to my prior post - I just want to be able to go online and talk about wrestling without having to dread the process. I don't have the energy or passion to put together a solution that will never come to fruition. The AEW roster should legitimately bully TK as if they were children. Shoot noogies. Shoot swirlies. Shoot wedgies until this stops.

Ok, cool guy. Where’s @Just Adam Bay Bay when someone is actually being homophobic? I, Dave Bautista, know a little something about burner accounts. Are you Jim Cornette, eric Bischoff, or some other bitter, out of touch goof?

It doesn't really damn them. If someone calls the Boston Celtics a racist franchise, that ain't a shot at Bill Russell or Cornbread Maxwell or Rajon Rondo. That's a shot at the city of Boston, their fans, and how the organization was/is ran. The WWE has or past tense, had a toxic culture. That part is indisputable. Whether that all ties into Vince and some mavericks, who knows? However, Vince is synonymous with WWE like Al Davis is with the Raiders. One and the same even if he is gone. Nobody thinks Vince McMahon.....and random office person #4572.

He can’t fix the ratings overnight. He CAN use this giant platform to point out what shitty people run the wwe. He did plug AEW programming several times. Also; fuck wwe.

Maybe it's because I'm stoned, but I'd love a DSOTR-spinoff where Haku is shown footage of events throughout history and we watch him laugh.

Collision was excellent. Main event got the good kind of crowd silence where they were hyper engaged and following along

This is solo Dave!! This is Van Hagar era!!!!! YOU GUYS ARE KILLING ME!!!!!!!!!!!! Honest question: do you at least like him as a promo??

My neck hurts just watching that, glad my backyard wrestling crew 25 years ago just wanted to do walk and brawl ECW shit with some folk-style from me.

Watching One False Move for the first time in years. Still as good now as it was then.

We have a volunteer.

Right?? And even that was just a bone thrown cause they were in Oklahoma - was hoping the nice hometown pop would lead to something more substantial. I'm surprised they don't use him at least in a similar capacity to your Brian* Cages and Archers and Wardlows as a gatekeeper monster (especially after hyping up his undefeated shoot record so much in the early days).

There are several examples of the commission doing nonsensical stuff to overcompensate so they don't look like the Keystone Cops. The thing is if you catch it BEFOREHAND and not afterwards, you probably won't come off as bumbling idiots. One of my personal favorites is a story from early in Roy Jones Jr. career. So Roy Jones after being robbed at the 1988 Olympics at Seoul turned pro shortly afterwards and was extremely mishandled in terms of management despite probably being the best fighter of the 1988 USA boxing team. He would occasionally pop up on the dying days of boxing on NBC or like Tuesday Night Fights, but he spent most of his time off TV fighting locally in Pensacola and at like state fairs in the Florida panhandle and often against no hopers and nondescript opponents. One of those opponents in 1990 was Derwin Richards of Houston, TX....Okay, it was suppose to be Derwin Richards. What happened was a guy named "Derwin Richards" showed up at the show in Pensacola and got KO'd by Roy in the first round much like all of Roy's opponents at the time. Roy gets his win and everyone goes home happy. That is until someone from the local paper in Pensacola points out, "Yeah, I don't think that's the guy who is in the program for the card." The commission looks into it. And yup, there are some irregularities. The first being that on the commission paperwork, the guy who showed up wrote down a record that totally didn't match the record in the relatively primitive record keeping sources at the time. The person whose job it was to check for those irregularities said she was **checks notes**...too busy. Yes, that was her excuse. Wouldn't want your job to get in the way of your commitments at your job. Anyway, they launch an official "investigation". First thing they find is it definitely WASN'T Derwin Richards. Why? Derwin Richards on the night of the fight was working as a security guard at a correctional facility in Houston, TX. So unless this guy who was probably making minimum wage at the time had a private jet to get him back and forth from and to Houston, Texas, it certainly wasn't him. So who the hell fought Roy Jones Jr. that night? So they look into the person who procured Roy's opponent. It was a guy out of Oklahoma City named Elvis Belt (what a name). Belt had been asked by the matchmaker named Gerome Peete if they could get the services of Mr. Richards for a purse of $2,000. From what I can figure, either Belt knew Richards and chose intentionally not to discuss the arrangements of a fight with Roy Jones Jr. or he just pretended to know Derwin Richards. Either way, Belt saw an opportunity to make some extra cash. In 2024 dollars, that purse would have been almost $5,000 dollars. What Belt did was roll up to some Oklahoma City boxing gym, found some guy with little to no experience named Tony Waddles, told him he would get $700 for fighting Roy Jones Jr., Waddles agreed, and they both drove down to Pensacola for the fight. When they got down there, Belt had Waddles pretend to be Derwin Richards and the matchmaker probably knew it wasn't the guy who he asked for. However, seeing as Roy Jones Jr. was the big local attraction, figured he couldn't have Roy not fight the guy who was advertised to be there. That and Waddles having little or no experience probably wouldn't have been cleared to fight a person who was literally two years removed from being declared the best boxer at the summer Olympics. They went through with the fight, Waddles got paid $700, and Belt pocketed the rest (over $3,100 in today's money). Afterwards, everyone got punished except the person whose job it was to make sure shit like that doesn't happen, the dumbass woman working for the commission who was too busy to look into shady stuff. Had someone (not working for the commission) not pointed out the guy who got knocked out wasn't the same guy being advertised, the commission would have been none the wiser.

Also, if Tony can find a red Ribera jacket and a bat with “THUMPER” on it for his next TV appearance Lost in the background of the best known Doug comment is the amazing “if I were you, I’d wanna play Doug Gilbert every day” which is an amazing way to respond to being imitated

She even stopped a second time at the energy drinks and replaced them in a nice order on the desks. Right then is when it became obvious.

I almost posted earlier this week that I felt Kraven would end up getting Adjustment Bureaud

That is great. Stardom collaborating with groups like Ice Ribbon and Wave (if I'm not mistaken, a couple of Stardom wrestlers are in this year's Catch the Wave) can only benefit everyone. I'd love to see Stardom working with all the smaller groups, like Pure-J or Diana as well. Things work better when there's collaboration. Hopefully this will still be going on when Ibuki Hoshi and Kaho Matsushita are back in action, because those two would be great in this kind of environment. It'd be massively beneficial for everyone, really. Stardom's younger/less-experienced wrestlers can get more time and variance in working with different people in different environments (Ice Ribbon, Pure-J, and Diana's dojo shows are perfect for this), and Stardom can benefit by having people like Tsukasa Fujimoto or Hanako Nakamori come in and give some fresh matchups to the top of Stardom's card. The smaller groups get more eyes, Stardom gets fresh matchups, everyone gets more experience, it's win-win all around as far as I'm concerned. And I really do hope they work with Pure-J too, because Crea and AKARI are both great and I think they deserve more attention on them.

I think my enjoyment of lists, be it very outwardly performative a majority of the time, is more a fun lighthearted exercise in evaluating individual taste and preferred aesthetic. Non-defined in-stone dynamically changing entities that have an individual look at what they personally value and forcing yourself to uncomfortably rank what it is you find either important or preferred. All in good fun! Especially being “favorite” could literally include nostalgia and subjective preference. The goal is to look inward and I really appreciate you taking the time to share with me that. That’s so cool! The Hair vs Hair match you listed is among my favorites. Such passion and I really felt the entire experience. How unfair bullying is! What’s crazy is I tried watching that match and I didn’t know I was watching one that happened months earlier. Turned out it was the wrong match! I was so confused why no one got their hair cut! But then I watched the actual match and it was insane. One thing I noticed was that Chigusa was going for moves that were successful a month early. Seeing everything being countered and not working was heartbreaking. Especially the shitty ref added so much to the drama. What a great match! So painful. Link me to the Cibernetico, please.

They fired Urban Meyer

Remember “Gotch Gracie” ?

Is it possible he was brought in solely to facilitate a sale and now that its complete is cashing out and heading to greener pastures?

That early Zero One roster was the most ragtag group of motherfuckers you could ever conjure up. PRIDE era Hirotaka Yokoi and Kintaro Kanemura. Same roster. I loved it. Bonus:

i think doing Top Lists and star ratings and stuff like that exists to fill a need to quantify our enjoyment of pro wrestling. Like, we feel like we can't just like stuff or dislike stuff, we have to rank it and rate it with real, hard numbers so our opinions can feel like real, hard facts. More and more I'm starting to think that this is a fallacy, so I guess I'm doing this pretentious, let's-be-honest-judgemental thing where I'm not trying to rank or rate anything. It's starting to tie in to the way I think about Meltzerism and the Olympic Figure Skatingization of pro wrestling. The preferred form of pro wrestling in this post-post-kayfabe era is becoming this thing that's judged on Degree of Difficulty and Cleanliness of Execution and How Many Things Can Happen in a Set Amount of Time and I think that's appealing to the young male masses the same way Eddie Van Halen playing the most notes the fastest made him the young male's fave guitarist decades ago. "If I'm going to make my enjoyment of [entertainment thing] part of my identity, I want to quantifiably argue why it is The Best Thing." A very teenage boy way of thinking. Not to say Eddie can't play great licks or that Ospreay can't have great moments. But the things they do, it's talent show, a guy doing the fastest moves and the fastest flips is a lot less abstract then the guy doing the most "feeling". And mainstream entertainment is so, so Not Abstract. Everything is so literal now. Maybe it's because the stories are FAKE and the athleticism is REAL and the modern fan is too ashamed to prioritize the FAKE artistic over the REAL athletic, and that this is a deeper symptom of post-kayfabe than we realize. Still, it's all a way to make the intangible tangible. Turning English into Math and all that. I've been writing up wrestling matches in a waaay more casual space than this one and three best ones out of the thirty or so I've posted before are Chigusa / Dump - Hair vs. Hair (the first one, the immoral manipulation of the audience one, the better one), the CMLL Torneo Cibernetico (the one you think), and JYD & Slaughter vs. Iron Sheik & Volkoff (again, the first one). So those are the recent classics that have brought me the most joy, although I'm sure I could argue that 6/9/95 is better or whatever. The Hair Match is the peak of audience manipulation. I've never seen anyone do that to a crowd, ever. I don't know if it's possible, I don't think you can get a crowd like late-80's Japanese Schoolgirls who can't Google the word "kayfabe" on their phones anymore. It speaks to a deeply jealous part of my theater kid self. I would kill to have that kind of power over an audience. It's perverse. The Cibernetico speaks to my love of long-form buffets. I'm not a horror movie buff, but I am VERY much an anthology horror movie buff. It's probably my favorite format for any kind of film. One out of every ten major releases should be an anthology. An hour plus of a bunch of thematically connected dope things happening in parallel. Even if it's the obvious choice the Felino Cibernetico is the best example of it I've seen. Helps that the framing device is Santo vs. Casas. My Dream AEW Match is making an entire episode of Rampage a Cibernetico with every luchador and ex-CHIKARA guy they have. The Big Philly Tag Match is perfect broad-stroke babyface vs. heel, a perfect New York brawl, it's the best glimpse of JYD's potential as a top babyface in the Fed if he hadn't been as troubled as he was, I actually posted it pre-Mania as a study in how smart and loud Philly crowds have always been. Something's always happening and everybody cares, every kid has a sign, nobody's cheering the heels even though you can tell the crowd is far more educated than others of the time. It's just neat.

It was an open secret for decades that Weinstein was not just being a “casting couch” sex pest but was sexually assaulting women, and also sexually trafficking some women in the same way Vince has been accused of. Vince’s casting couch/sexual assault and harassment dates back decades and he also helped cover up a lot of sexual harassment and assault from upper level employees for decades. It’s actually a very apt comparison.

Guys, it’s a New HHH Era though. Steph told us. All allegations and lawsuits should be dropped.

Amongst all the craziness, let me just take a moment to say Matt is a class act. Very kind person and knowledgeable wrestling fan that has well formed opinions.

*looks at all the bugs and issues with the next gen update Bugs and Bethesda games…bugs and Bethesda games never changes.

“Triple H can find a spoon and eat my ass” popped me, not gonna lie.

Does Hayes still work there in a high position ? Prichard? Any number of white guys of a certain age who came up in this business in the 70s and 80s? Then racism and sexism is alive and well there. Let’s not bullshit ourselves.

TK throwing fucking haymakers on NFL network. Called wwe the “Harvey Weinstein of pro wrestling.”

Watching Big Trouble in Little China all the way through for the first time. Damn is it good and I'll leave it at that.

Everybody wants some!! So come get some!! ? Ehhhh...