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it's been like 15 years since I posted on this board OR went to a wrestling show (that's what moving to a tiny island in the Pacific Ocean will do to you) but you know, everything is cyclical so let's do a Big Post on ACTION DEAN~! Right off the bat explaining to my wife what I needed to fly to the East Coast to do was a little complicated but I just bought the ticket first and let the rest work itself out. We've been in pretty severe crisis mode for the last few years (like... everybody else on Earth) and my whole resolution for 2-0-2-4 was to pull out of the nosedive and be a Human Man, with Human Interests once more. So we used some miles and I hooked up a place to stay with an old friend in NYC and made it a reality. I took the train from NYC to Philly and then a bus and then another bus to the closest hotel to the venue (the Plum Tree Inn), a place so sketchy my bank automatically pinged a fraud alarm the instant I checked in. After taking a shower I walked the 3 miles to the H20 Wrestling Center, located like all good things in the middle of a mixed use office park. It actually turned out to be a little bit longer because I was listening to a podcast my wife sent me to help her with a job interview so I missed the turn but after walking through a charming suburban neighborhood where it doesn't appear that people just walk through I found first the Wawa and then the venue. As I walked up all the workers were around the front side of the building and I overheard somebody say "big clothesline WHOOSH" before I found the real door. Nobody like checked my ticket or anything but you know how it goes. I have not been Deep Into wrestling for some time so a lot of these guys I have barely seen in passing or at all but I did not Complain on the Internet or even Do My Own Research about it. Colby Corino becomes the first challenger for a title I've ever seen warn the crowd that he's very tired, and justifiably so! Both him and Alex Kane have huge and very different charisma and this was definitely fun, the right amount of length and shenanigans without burning anything out. This show was LONG but for the most part the pacing was very smart (we'll get to the Most Part later). The Good Hand get the "early NWO heel stable" combination of a good talker, a laconic big man and a little fucking asshole piece of shit that everybody wants to see die rolling early and their match with Amboss / O'Shea Edwards was fun, especially because Kevin Ryan is a very good little fucking asshole piece of shit that everybody wants to see die. Suge D's failed armdrag bit with the enormous Edwards was also very charming and the moonsault at the end was a Big Fella Flying. Ugly Sucklings vs. Violence Is Forever was a quick little sprint packed with grisly offense from both sides. I liked the pace of this a lot and everything looked good. Here's White Mike taking a little breather in the empty chair next to me, a chair that would get a significant amount of use throughout the evening. https://shortandhappy.com/images/dean-mike.jpg The first appearance of the Nasty Ring Mat heralded the crowd popping for Gypsy Joe Rules despite having no idea what they were. Tom Lawlor coming into the match dressed like he just finished up his shift at Best Buy was the little touch of surrealism that made this magical. A lot of it happened outside the ring on the other side from where I was sitting but watching Tank blade was hilarious, he worked his forehead with the frenetic zeal of a squirrel trying to open a Brazil nut. 3 Flippy Guys vs. 3 Strong Motherfuckers was exactly what it said on the tin. Danny Demanto's plaintive request for a single door was deeply touching, and then he set the door up against the ropes right in front of me so I figured I just wouldn't see anything. Then somebody got flung into it and a tuft of his hair was sticking out of the door the entire match, which was pretty gross. Most of this match was Bobby Flaco just getting the living shit kicked out of him. "Unkillable" Brayden Toon is the weirdest wrestling name I've heard in a while. Is he a living cartoon? Is his signature match a scaffold match over a vat of Dip? https://shortandhappy.com/images/dean-flaco.jpg I liked the work in Gringo Loco vs. Dr. Cerebro a lot but the actual match was a little off-feeling, with the inexplicable DQ for a chairshot on the arm? followed by a match restart and the chair just lying there? Everything they did looked great though and it was fun as fuck and Cerebro has Veteran Presence. https://shortandhappy.com/images/dean-cerebro.jpg Krule and Warhorse worked hard but this match was incredibly long-feeling. Krule's Hello Kitty lighter fell out of his pocket onto the mat right in front of me like three minutes into the thing. Mr. Horse has a lovely top rope elbow and they did a lot of careening into chairs but there was also Jumping Nothings into Goozles and other unsatisfactory things. I could have used five minutes less on this. Put that five minutes into Makowski vs Arez which was billed as a clash of styles but everything these guys did looked perfect, smooth and hard-hitting and great. Arez's toe-tap moonsault off the ropes is devastatingly beautiful. This seemed like it was just shifting into another gear when it ended but I definitely wanted more. Adam Priest is a guy I've been hearing a lot of praise for and while "Any Style" is a completely doofus nickname he really came out and delivered the most Professional Wrestling match of the night, talking multitudes of shit towards the recently unemployed Slim J throughout the match and making everything he did look great. This was worked precisely like it should be, nothing out of place and nothing unnecessary, just two great performers locking in on it. The rope neck snap to get out of the sleeper was disgusting even if I could barely see it. So gross! I wasn't as into Sinner & Saint vs. Youth and Mathers as some others seem to be. I started to drift out of wrestling as that super indie style was coming to prominence, and by this point I'd seen so many Guys doing so much Stuff that a match like this, which was full of Guys and Stuff, was gilding the proverbial lily. Nothing essentially wrong with this and it all looked good, just not for me. These guys are all babies so hopefully they'll grow into being a little bit lazier, like a man does. https://shortandhappy.com/images/dean-sinner.jpg What can you even say anymore about Demus vs. Mad Dog Connelly? Demus is a foulmouthed short king but the instant Connelly stepped out and started whipping that chain around this felt DANGEROUS in a "somebody in the crowd is going to lose a tooth" way. These guys just wailed the shit out of each other in a ton of intense and great-looking ways. I got the same garbage can thrown at me twice, and it was most certainly full of garbage. This match was the kind of thing that's impossible to explain to somebody who doesn't already Get It, but if you Get It than the Getting's Good. https://shortandhappy.com/images/dean-demus.jpg Main event was incredible. Being able to watch these two guys work each other over from the front row, see the struggle and shift and work, was truly special. Both Makabe and Thatcher are masters of this kind of close work, and everything here felt earned and tense and logical, right down to the three nasty punches they closed with. When my daughter was looking through my photos she stopped at this one and said "that looks like it REALLY hurts." That's how you know you're doing it right. https://shortandhappy.com/images/dean-makabe.jpg But most importantly? At one point during the match, quietly under-the-breath whispered from Thatcher to Makabe, "you OK?" just long enough to connect and affirm the trust and closeness necessary to work this violently with each other. Not intentional, not meant to be heard, but living proof that pro wrestling is love is pro wrestling is love. My most cherished memory of DEAN~ is when I met him and a bunch of the other guys for the first time at the 2000 ECWA Super 8 (aka "The One Before The Good One"). I had made my way to Wilmington, Delaware in the way I did in my 20s, ramshackle and improvised, and when the show let out Dean asked me where I was staying and I just pointed off into the woods, an act which he'd bring up to me several times in the next decade or so. RIP big man, you made this Internet a place for me to share something special and learn from the best. Might not post here for another 15 years, but who knows? Lot of stuff on this board doesn't seem to be working if you want me to look at the code.

My dude, they don't care. I'm not saying this to aim at you or anything, but there are people going "don't they know it's not a real sport?!", and it ignores the simple fact that they don't want LGBTQ folks (and ESPECIALLY trans folks) to be involved in any aspect of life whatsoever. Real sports, fake sports, teaching in schools, working in a job - literally any job - they don't care. I can go into dozens upon dozens of explanations as to why the physiological arguments don't line up and they'll just go "hurr durr durr chromosomes" or "hurr durr durr protect women" because they don't care about any of it. It's buzz word salad because they want us gone. And it doesn't stop at Nyla Rose. Booking another trans person against Nyla and going "ha! Take that!" doesn't solve the problem because that's one of their weasel arguments; that trans people should just compete against each other, knowing full well there aren't enough of us in most situations to do that. The fact that there actually are enough trans wrestlers do to that means the goalposts will then move, and it'll just become WELL THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!! I have a friend who's a librarian, who spoke out about the protests against drag queen story hours. Someone said "why not get a cop or fire fighter to read to the kids" and she said "I tried, they don't show up, drag queens do", and guess what... they would rather have literally nobody read to a kid than a drag queen read to a kid because heaven forbid people have to have a conversation with their child that might make the parent mildly uncomfortable, like being a parent doesn't involve being mildly uncomfortable 95% of the time. Anyway, to make this about wrestling because I'm breaking all kinds of board rules, the Oklahoma State Athletic Commission can go suck a fuck and people should go about their business. If they want to fine AEW for putting a trans wrestler on the show, TK should pay it. And I got news for him, they'll start fining you for having gay wrestlers next because that's the slope we're heading down unless you put a stop to it like right the fuck now.

Our friend Dylan Hales tweeted the cover art:

Riley Gaines is such a hateful pathetic grifter who wasn’t even close the best woman on her team. Fuck her and the career she’s making out of being a hateful piece of shit. I deal with enough of this trans panic crap daily I don’t need it coming into my fake figuring and yet here we are (Note for those who don’t know: I’m trans af)

Oklahoma is a fucking joke. Fuck their governor. Keep fucking censuring lawmakers and give half hearted “it’s a tragedy” statements to fucking teens that die that don’t share your lifestyles, you dishonest whores of Babylon

That's a different RF brother

You'll get the same strawman arguments when these knuckleheads argue about "protecting women's sports", like they aren't mocking that nobody cares about women's sports or shuffling money around to only give scholarships to football and men's basketball programs. Pablo Torre did an episode of his podcast to interview the single varsity sports player in the entire state of Ohio. For all the ignorant bleating about the subject and its supposed epidemic status, there is literally one trans girl playing in the entire state. She is the backup catcher on the softball team. She just wants to play with her friends. Imagine that. THE HORROR!!! Here's the episode: https://youtu.be/nJc4hxxdCJ8?si=OLne9uJDChk6TvDE How dare us terrible transes try to be part of society.

I’m so straight, my house is filled with tough straight stuff like leather and pictures of buff bikers.

Don’t tread on Nyla, you corrupt bigoted fucks. Stay out of wrestling. Grow a heart, you 2056 shamed and regretful mother fuckers. May the non-binary Holy Spirit rightfully tie you to the spokes of eternal torment as your ancestors denounce you.

Holy shit I just realized that Roderick Strong is that goofy math teacher looking dude in the hardcore band that if he’s there means you’re going to die in the pit

Quite possible the first time I ever spent money on non-WCW or WWE wrestling was giving one of my parents a five dollar bill so I could buy an Comcast OnDemand PPV with a bunch of joshi matches. LCO was included and the Death Lake Driver left a proper mark on me. Speaking of proper marks, between the Reddit Cares Safety Squad going all-out on that first post & the thousands of takes getting mad at Bryan Danielson for selling too good... can every human being go away? I feel like I am trapped in a madhouse. The pro-wrestling fanbase simultaneously complains about no-selling and gets mad when you pretend a move hurts. This wasn't even exploiting Danielson's concussion history. He sold like his neck got compressed. Like he was in a ton of pain and had his nerves jammed. I've had that happen to me. I've felt the painful results of it every day for over a decade. It was a proper, realistic sell and I thought that was the point. God damnit, we can't have any fun. No nice things.

Also, has there ever been a duel like finish like the one we had with Danielson/Ospreay? I think it's the first time I've ever seen two wrestlers charge at each other like the opening to the X-Men cartoon and try to beat each other to the punch with their best move.... Holy shit

Yeah I was mid-tangent and my wording went all to heck so thank you for saying this, I meant that if Oklahoma was going to fine Nyla, TK should pay it, but I'm very much in favor of not paying it whatsoever because it's a bullshit sanction for a bullshit rule from a bullshit commission full of bullshit grifters. State commissions don't do a damn thing for wrestlers aside from take their fees each month and a cut of each show's gate. If all they're there for is to collect a cut and do nothing else, get rid of them, especially when they're doing nonsense like this.

Ric "LOL I'll pretend you said 18 (or 21 depending on State laws)" Flair?

It's almost like, when you get right down to it, it's all just bullshit.

Mima Shimoda doing them for years as the Death Lake Driver and nearly looking like she killed people every time. She eventually loosened up so it was more like a normal flat back but there's a reason people stopped doing it for a couple of decades. EDIT TO ADD - Straight up murder version: https://www.reddit.com/r/SquaredCircle/comments/19bxvhy/mima_shimoda_hits_the_deathlake_driver_on_a/ - Toned down version, still murdery: https://twitter.com/SirLARIATO/status/1779948938487009402

Man, I loved the suplexes. Far from the most graceful, but he fearlessly ate shit on all of them. Honestly, I think the match falling a little flat actually says more about Hook’s lack of development than Jericho. Jericho took a bunch of gnarly bumps for him, let him kick out of literally all of his shit, and Hook still couldn’t really get the crowd behind him. Hook really hasn’t figured out how to progress beyond squash/meme wrestler yet. I don’t think that’s talked about enough in regards to how lame this story with Jericho had come across.

they recreated their poster

That crowd was amazing, I had no idea St. Louis was capable of such a thing but it was the best crowd I've heard in a long time. They had unique chants but always about what was happening in the ring, not to put themselves over, and were involved in every match. The matches were great, no doubt, but having a hot crowd always helps and they were into it start to finish. Good job, crowd.

Tony looks like the dad in an 80s sitcom where a lovable Soviet soldier accidentally lands in America and befriends the kids of a suburban family and they have to hide him from the nosy neighbors.

Tony with the look of a man who insists it's tyranny to ban smoking at Denny's

They've announced Nyla as host for Zero Hour.

Trust me, I've been dealing with this sort of stuff for a long time. I know what I'm working with here. They're doing two things. 1) Rallying up support to stop trans people from competing in legitimate sports, because frankly there isn't enough of us who actually compete in legitimate sports to beat the drum with nearly as much intensity as they do. (See my earlier post about how the state of Ohio only having one trans athlete in all of high school sports as they attempted to stop the supposed swarm of trans athletes). 2) Getting people to delegitimize the complaint, because when people go "it's just pro wrestling, it's all fake", they can respond "well, you don't care about real women, that's why you don't think this is a big deal! We're trying to protect real women! Blah blah bloo!" like we'll get our trans cooties on them or turn them into newts or whatever. It's not that they're too stupid to get that there was no legitimate competition in play. It's that they're trying to delegitimize the argument entirely. The argument people should be having isn't "it's a fake sport, so what", it's "trans people are actual human beings who should be able to participate in sports anyway if they want to, and most of them don't unless it's to hang out with their friends, leave these people alone you utter creeps".

Didn’t know Buddy was taping his stuff in Amarillo too (ha, probably not that?) Also gonna mention that Rose/Funk match could be the only time they ever faced each other in a singles match (there was a Terry/Dory vs Buddy Rose/Rip Oliver match from the Omni in 1982) I’m ready for more of JJ Dillon when he looked like Tom Smykowski (from Office Space). There’s just something amusingly sleazy about a wrestling manager who looks like he got fired from Office Depot for embezzlement

https://twitter.com/AEW/status/1339254795350265862/photo/1 Eddie Kingston addresses his enemies is probably my favorite alternative title to promo segment. Also that last sentence is triggering for someone who is using his lunch break to get away from the corporate world.

I got an e mail yesterday announcing that AEW is running Dynamite on my birthday 6/5 in Loveland, CO. Pre sale was today so I grabbed tix for me and my bud. To be honest, my interest in AEW is at a low point but live TV wrestling 40 minutes away on my birthday? Shit, I'm down.

That cover photo goes sooooooooooo fucking hard.

https://smartmarkvideo.com/dvd/action-wrestling-blu-ray-april-4-2024-dean-williamstown-nj#intro Hey everyone! DEAN~!!! is now out on Blu Ray over at Smart Mark!

Honestly, 2 of WWE's top guys right now are people that were floundering with no direction, got released, and reinvented themselves on the indies/TNA/AEW and came back and got red hot. Leaving isn't the worst thing in the world, especially with the amount of promotions around looking for another spark. It's good for guys to have options again to try a different territory.

Sheamus/Drew is sort of like Sami/KO. It’s never a wrong answer. I think Drew might be a the peak of his powers more than any other wrestler in the game right now. I didn’t have a clue that his all around ceiling was this high.

My take on the big match: http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2024/04/aew-five-fingers-of-death-415-421.html?m=1

I've known Anthony/Santino casually for about 15 years. I remember joking with him about how much better a Russian he was that Nikita Koloff. Dude is a legit judoka (he actually trained a friend's daughter to multiple championships) and I'm so glad for him to get this booking against a legend like Sakuraba. Edit: i bet he must be once again be training like a real aminal for this match lol

So when is Christian feuding with Angelo Parker? Before or after the baby is born??

I just can't get on board with the hate on Danielson's selling. Half the guys on the indies do twitching selling they just aren't good at it. I'm not going to turn on the guy because his selling is good. I refuse.

Danielson is going to fine himself so hard

I made a pro-wrestling version of Connections https://connections.swellgarfo.com/game/-Nvt9WLDIksI7SpyyJK3

The classic play is for the face to say "We don't have to wait, we can do this right here, right now in Cheap Pop City!", and then the heel (or heel manager) says "We're not doing this match in Cheap Pop City, we're doing it down the line. Cheap Pop City doesn't deserve it, because Cheap Pop City sucks!".

But got a middling reaction because of one of my most hated of wrestling tropes: the babyface announcing a big match...next week...somewhere else. It makes perfect sense when a heel does it ("I'm not giving this away in front of you rubes!" "Like I'd wrestle in [insert town name here]!" etc. etc.), but when a babyface, like Mox, says "I'm going to wrestle Will Hobbs [Yay!]...next week in Jacksonville!" why would the crowd cheer for it?! WWE does this too, but AEW does it all the time: Hot Crowd: We love you! AEW Face: I'm going to defend my title... Hotter Crowd: Yes! AEW Face: ...next week... Lukewarm Crowd: Wait what?! AEW Face: ...somewhere other than here! Deflated Crowd: But...why not here?! AEW Face: See ya later, I'm done for the night AEW: Coming up next...Chris Jericho hosts a symposium with Hook Dead Crowd: Oh...goody

We've got to keep level heads and look at all sides here. Who's to say this isn't a huge misunderstanding, and that the Oklahoma republicans weren't simply opressing Nyla for being Native American?

Daniels and Sydal were two of the first people out for the CMLL invasion so I think they're just canonically about that life.

We weren't supposed to?

Moxley challenging Hobbs in Jacksonville is a cool callback to the early days/covid days of AEW when Hobbs first hit the scene and looked to be aligning himself with Moxley.

I'm inviting you to join my wrestling-themed Def Poetry Jam circle. If you accept, there will be two of us in the group.

Aaron Rodgers opened his mouth again. It's about HIV/AIDS and Dr. Fauci and "plandemics" and FUCK him.

Rate their fits: Bunkhouse match edition Danielson: gets massive points for the classic “blue jeans with knee pads on the outside” look. Really, the only acceptable bunkhouse/street fight attire. Loses points for wearing his own merch instead of a gimme shirt from the local radio station. Claudio: black jeans and knee pads on the inside. Real fashion faux pas. Shirt came off and he ended up looking like a member of Too Sexy: A Loving Tribute to Right Said Fred. Takeshita: stereotypical gear made him look like a guy you’d dispose of in the first level of Kung Fu. I guess he didn’t want to straight up dress like a Yakuza since he does have to go home sometime. Fletcher: remember when MC Hammer dropped the “MC” and tried to make a comeback with some fake thug 3rd rate West Coast style shit? Fletcher looked like a 90s boy band member trying to get back on track with the same tactic with his yee yee ass haircut and bobo Tims.

AEW seems to do the wild-hate-brawl so much better (maybe because the WWE style seems more, I dunno.. coregraphed. But that just might be my opinion

Would you buy home owners insurance from these men? Tony in particular looks like he loves breakfast food and hates the government

Maybe Vince never knew the concept of pets existed because he was working, lifting weights, and sex pred-ing 168 hours per week. New Peacock reality show as 78 year old Vince McMahon catches up with a new thing he's missed out on in life each week. He could start slow with something like ice cream, then eventually work up to "real human kindness that's not purely transactional."