Craig H

The FTW belt looked so scratched and dinged up that I would have been surprised if it wasn't the original belt.

The whole "Vince is losing patience with people sitting at home" sounds a little bit like bullshit to me. There's been a few people who have spoken about the positive reaction they received to wanting to go home or not travel to shows. Kevin Owens was one. Now, I think KO is probably on a different level when it comes to what he's allowed to do, but it just doesn't sound right. Then again, this is Vince we're talking about so who knows.

Fucking loved night 2 of Fyter Fest, maybe even more than night 1. The opening tag is fine, but once again Private Party or Marq Quen moves too fast and winds up just waiting for forever for the next spot. I'm surprised we didn't see more dissension teased between Hangman and Omega. The eight man tag was everything. Holy shit. I was marking out when Dax and Penta were going at it early on in the match. FTR and Penta and Fenix look like they have instant chemistry and I'm all for those two teams getting 20 to 30 minutes next week. Fuck yeah. The rest of the match fucking ruled and the Destroyer off the ropes to the outside was insane. Put that spot on the opening video of every Dynamite. The moment I saw Taz have a velvet bag in his hand when he came out I knew his announcement would be gifting the FTW title to Cage. I was kinda eh when I initially thought of it, but then Taz started talking, I started remembering how much I loved FTW Taz, I remembered how cool the FTW title was back in the day, and I wound up being pretty ok. It does feel a little too "DiBiase gives the Million Dollar Championship to Austin," but whatever. I'm now wondering if Cage is going to win next week. AEW is in this pattern of having their newest big man signings lose in title matches, whether if it's Archer or Lee and adding Cage to that list would suck. I wouldn't have much of an issue with Cage beating Moxley next week. Taz may also be a better version of Heyman and I wish they had live crowds to react to him. Through all of this, if Cage somehow absorbs the ability to talk like Taz, then that's a huge win. I'll take Cage talking like Taz over Kross trying to wrestle like Taz. Speaking of Archer, how fucking good is this guy?! I wish he was able to figure this out when he was younger, but I'm glad he finally did when he was in Japan. Dude is getting up there in years for a wrestler so hopefully he holds together well. Nyla taking on two jobbers was pretty uninteresting. Jericho vs OC was so, so good. What an awesome match. I get both sides of the argument for OC winning or losing. I'm ultimately bummed OC lost, but that's how I'm supposed to feel. I'm supposed to be bummed out. At the same time, it would have been awesome for him to win. If you have him win though, then what do you do with OC? Is it his time for a push? AEW is in this weird holding pattern in that they both are and aren't in one. You can see storylines progressing and it doesn't feel like everything is on hold. They got some similar criticism last year when everything wasn't happening right away and you just have to be patient. Storylines get more ramped up the closer they get to PPV and that's how it's always been for them. I get that can sometimes be boring, but I'd rather have longterm storytelling lead to big payoffs than somewhat hotshotting something like OC beating Jericho on AEW Dynamite.

I love Adam Cole, but he was WAY overdue to lose the title and Lee is the best person to drop it to. I'm so fucking happy we didn't have to endure months of Lee losing to Cole for Lee to finally win. I'm not a fan of that kind of storytelling in wrestling and I think it's a little overdone these days. It's why I was so happy with Mox beating Jericho in their first meeting and I'm so happy with Lee beating Cole. As for their match, eh, it was fine. I didn't think it was anything that blew me away, but I was almost happy to see them NOT use the HHH/HBK epic match layout for it. Honestly, as much as I like Drew Mac, we should have had Lee winning the Rumble and then beating Brock to make an instant star. Now my fear is that Lee is just going to be a transitional champion and Kross is going to win it soon.

I got excited around a year ago when I saw that Aya Cash was going to be Stormfront. Seemed like perfect casting given how well she performed in You're the Worst. Everything I keep seeing from season 2 of the Boys looks so awesome. I'm definitely going to re-watch the first season.

I gotta say, so far, Hulu+ with live TV is pretty awesome. It has basically everything my daughter, wife, mom, and myself want, it's a one stop shop for live tv and the whole catalog of recorded series, I still get ESPN+ and Disney Plus, and I'm paying less altogether than what YTTV is going to start charging in August.

I'm guessing they'll spend a lot of time talking up their new battle royale game. I'm tempted to try that one out, but I think I'm kinda over battle royale games, especially since Valorant came out.

Yeah, I don't think Britt is a great in ring performer, but she has a top tier character and she needs to be programmed against GOOD workers to get better and not, you know, Big Swole. Honestly, I think Big Swole is super indy and generic. Her name is Big Swole and yet most of the division is bigger than her and stronger than her. They also can do shit in the ring better than her.

Sling just isn't going to work for me. It just feels very cumbersome to use. I like the price, but not much else. What will work is Hulu Live TV. So YTTV is going to be $65. I also have the Disney/Hulu/ESPN bundle for $13. That's $78 or more for all of that. I can switch to Hulu Live with the Disney bundle that includes nearly everything YTTV has, it includes Disney/Hulu/ESPN that I'm already paying for, and it's $62 a month. It's only a $16 difference, but it basically brings me back to what I was paying before. I love the YTTV interface. It's probably the best out of everything I've used. The DVR is fantastic. The on demand library is great too. I just can't justify spending $65 for YTTV though, no matter how good it is. I'm hoping Google comes to their senses with how much bullshit this is and makes a more ala carte product. Hell, I'd go back to YTTV in an instant if they dropped the price back down to $50 and made the sports or Viacom shit add on stuff for an additional price. I doubt they'll do that. They haven't done that for any of their other increases. One other benefit of Hulu Live TV...They have the Marquee network. As much as I hate Tom Ricketts and his whole corrupt family and as much as I hate Sinclair, I still want to watch Cubs baseball and that gives me the opportunity to do that if there even is a baseball season.

To quote the underboss: FUCK EM

That was fucking awesome. Her entrance gave me goosebumps. The way she came out with her music thumping like that and the whole presentation I thought, she is going to be a huge star if they don't fuck this up. And the match was great too.

The ending is perfect.

I'm done with YTTV. Fuck em. I switched to YTTV when it was $35 because it had a very limited selection of channels that fit my family's viewing habits very well. In the time since they've continued to make large price jumps. This most recent one to add a bunch of bullshit that I don't want for $15 more dollars is the last straw. I don't understand why they don't follow Sling's model of just offering package add-ons. Like, if you want all of these bullshit Viacom channels, then you can pay extra to get them. Otherwise, take care of the people that jumped onto your service early on as the best alternative to TV. I switched to Sling for the trial. I have yet to use it on my Roku, but the phone app seems much better than the last time I used Sling a couple years ago. I'm hoping the TV app works well too. Better yet, the Sling Blue basically gives me everything I want. I don't want or need all of the sports channels, I couldn't care less about having a bunch of dumb music channels, and I don't bother with news channels. So it looks like I can get what I want for $30. The only downsides with Sling are the limited DVR, on demand options, locking out some channels from pausing or rewinding, and no local channels. Do all of those add up to $35 extra, I don't think so, but we'll see. I need to research some other options too. I'd go as high as $50 for this shit. It also bums me out that Playstation Vue is dead because I thought that service was really good.

Anyone know what's up with Austin's podcast going back to endless re-runs again? He did this before and then came back with new interviews and has since stopped doing podcasts again. Also, yes, the New Day podcast is awesome. Side note, I'm really for and proud of Dan Rykert from Giant Bomb. He left Giant Bomb and video games journalism entirely to be a producer for WWE's podcasts and is the main person in charge of the New Day podcast. If you know anything about Dan, he's kinda...slow, and sheltered. He's one of those people who I think understood that racism was a thing, but I think his view of that and politics in general was very narrow. I mean, the dude didn't think or realize that the Metal Gear games were political. Anyway, Dan has grown a shitton in a short amount of time in working with the New Day and I'm happy for him. Podcasts on Mondays are usually pretty dry. For me it's usually Armchair Expert, HoneyDew, Self-Helpless, WTF, 83 Weeks, and the New Day. Of those, I only really look forward to the New Day's podcast. It's also the only one out of those I listed that I subscribe to that I listen to each week.The rest I'll listen to if there's a certain subject or guest that's interesting, but I could listen to Kofi, Big E, and Xavier talk for hours about whatever.

I would also be totally down for a Lost comeback series, not a reboot. I don't know how you do it, but I would love it if Lindelof could take his experiences from the Leftovers and Watchmen and make a very, very tight 3 to 4 season long continuation series. Maybe 10 episodes per season or something like that. Put it on HBO Max.