Craig H

That was fucking awesome.

What a super neat country we live in...

He did another interview where he was more tongue in cheek about it. I believe he said it has to do with KOR's balls after Sting hit him. So it's either worked or he's covering up for something more serious.

I believe KOR's injury is worked to give him some time off until Fish is ready to come back in about a month.

For the people that keep mentioning lee moriarty, first of all, lee isn’t that good. Sorry. More importantly, he’s injured so it’s not him. As for Filthy Tom, Dave made it sound like he’s already in Japan getting ready for the G1.

I am so, so, so close to finishing Discovery. I have to say, man, this is not a good TV show. Every season is, "WOAH, BIG SPACE MYSTERY!!!!" and then trying to pull at heartstrings that are totally unearned. For example, we never really hear Book talk about his home planet, his nephew, or his cousin. We get one episode of that and the next episode they destroy that planet and we're expected to give a shit? If Book talked about how important that place was to him from the beginning then it would have more weight, but as it is, it's just another unearned moment. And Discovery has been littered with bullshit like this. Something or someone gets introduced in one episode and then the next episode later they're dead. Another good example is when the android looking woman on the bridge dies. She is literally just a background character and her name is used maybe once or twice. Then she gets an episode where she dies and everyone acts all sad, but this character was never given any weight to feel sad for. The other thing that really bugs me about Discovery is that these all might as well be nameless, faceless, wireframes of characters. What are Burnham's interests? What does she like? What are her hobbies? The most we know about Burnham is that she thought her parents died, she was raised by Vulcans, and that's about it. What about Lt. Detmer? Who is she? What does she like? How about the Asian guy that's always on the bridge where they say his name approximately once per season. I mean, I get that this isn't TNG or DS9 and there isn't a ton of time to explore all of these characters to flesh them out, but Jesus Christ, give us something, ANYTHING. Everyone is just so hollow and annoying. In this entire run of Discovery that I've watched we have yet to get one episode where the crew has nothing going on and everyone is just hanging out except there's some kind of mystery of the week stemming from a holodeck or something. Everything is just plowing ahead towards unraveling the greater mystery that gets introduced in the first episode. I really thought that after season three and finding out what the Burn was caused by that I was just going to tap out on the series. So you're telling me that the Burn wasn't caused by some kind of computer virus created by space pirates/terrorists, it wasn't something caused by the Emerald Chain, but it was rather caused by some dumb as fuck Kelpien that screams when he gets scared and is on a planet that he just happens to have two perfect genetic mutations for - one that makes him immune to radiation poisoning, and the other that makes him resonate with dilithium on a subspace level. THAT'S WHAT THEY CAME UP WITH?! And then in the first two episodes of season 4 Su'Kal is no longer a fucking idiot and appears to have grown and matured greatly in what was a matter of months hanging out with Saru. Like, come on. This series should be so much better than it is and it's just continuously kicking you in the nuts. My friends are all telling me to just skip past the rest of Discovery and move on to SNW because SNW is actually really good, but there's a masochistic side to me that just needs to know what happens on Discovery.

Regal was the perfect example of this, but reusing him for that role would kind of suck since it's just copying his NXT days. Even still, who would be better than Regal for that role?

Whenever a game gets talked up on the few gaming podcasts I listen to (Nextlander, Giant Bombcast, and now the Jeff Gerstman Show) it's usually a sign that I should buy that game. And that game is Neon White. Holy shit. This is a fucking game. Like, it just fucking rocks. I have so far wound up replaying every level multiple times to platinum rank each level and to get the gift from each level. What's cool is that by doing that, it's teaching me things to instantly look for whenever I start a new level sight unseen. It almost feels like being in the Matrix and getting training for something. You learn all of these things from other levels, go into a new level you haven't seen yet, and in the first split second it's like you're looking at where the flow of 1s and 0s are that you should be hitting to instantly gold or platinum a level. And then you start your run doing everything you learned, speeding your way through, shooting demons, and then get to the end in about 15 seconds. It's awesome. So awesome. I have mostly skipped past all of the storybook stuff just to get to playing levels faster.

BTW, pairing Stokely with Jade was a stroke of genius. They are so perfect together.

Man, I haven't had a Hostess Cherry Pie in almost 30 years. I wonder if they're still good.

I am Jay White and I. AM. THE. CATALYTIC. CONVERTER!

How dare you denigrate the Knife Pervert.

I mean, you can't leave the most over guy on the roster off of the show. I also don't think I'll ever get tired of Billy Gunn seemingly loving Max and Bowens more than his own kids. Who is the David Starr mashed with Dan Severn looking guy?

If Sonny Kiss isn't a baddie then what the fuck are we even doing?

I guess I'll be the odd person and say I thought Christian's promo lasted forever and contained him saying "See, here's the thing" about 100 times. Sometimes back to back. I think the content was good, but it was entirely too long to get to the real shit and so he had to ramble through too much of it. I was also amused at how Christian almost made himself break by saying Jungle Boy's mom was getting sweet on Christian Cage. It wasn't a bad promo or anything, it just went on too long. My interest for Forbidden Door is now much, much higher than what it was even if some of the booking is weird. For instance, Jay White appears to have the ability to name his opponent for the title. He won't give Cole a shot, he won't give Page a shot, but suddenly Okada interferes and we get a 4-way for the title, which seems to mean that Jay White is really fucking stupid and decided to defend against three others at the same time? Ok then. Also, having two 4-ways on the same PPV, with both involving titles is...weird. I mean, they're both giving me something I really want, so that's awesome. In one I get to see Okada and Hangman or Hangman and White go at it. In the other I get the dream - Miro and Ishii going at it. I think that has been one of my dream matches for a long time now. And even if they're in a 4-way, at some point those two monsters are going to square off and it's going to fucking rule. Man, if this leads to Miro losing and Ishii winning and Miro is all like, "MY GOD IS NOW TELLING ME TO GO TO THE LAND OF THE RISING SUN SO I CAN KILL ISHII" then sign me up. The mystery opponent is going to either be something cool like Cesaro, which presents another booking problem in AEW because it's another WWE guy and it's not like Cesaro is going to get more opportunities in AEW than he would in WWE. Or it's going to be really disappointing and it will be Gresham. I haven't been exposed to a ton of Gresham matches, but the dude is a charisma vacuum. I also don't think he's that great of a wrestler, but that's just me. Different tastes and all that. Speaking of people I don't think are great wrestlers, man, every time I watch Tanahashi move it's just sad. I will give you that at one point he was one of the best wrestlers in the world, but now he's someone who has knees being held together with super glue and painters tape and watching the way he moves just takes me out of a match. Even still, I'm fairly confident he's going to have a great match with Moxley and I did like their stare down. Like, they're so laser focused on each other that they don't care about any of the chaos going on outside of the ring. I think that's the message they were trying to send and it would have been helpful for JR or Excalibur to call that out. Rest of the show was pretty good, but it's weird being in this zone where they're booking for this bubble PPV and also booking for the following weeks of TV. Things should hopefully get simpler once Forbidden Door is out of the way and we can get back to whatever angles are booked in the short term and then see what the booking is going to be for All Out.

VPN talk is fine, I think, but Fite doesn't play nice with NordVPN, which is what I subscribe to. Otherwise I would use Fite simply because it's a million times better than BR.

Thinking about pricing for this, maybe it would have been a smart move to drop this down to a one time only price of $30 or $40. Give people on the fence a reason to order and get some newer viewers to see what an AEW PPV is like without the full $50 commitment.

The Hoosierdome sucked in general.

I mean, I'm still ordering, but I'm just not going to drive an hour and a half to see it. That and my 10 month old has covid, the flu, an ear infection, and she's teething. There's no way I'd be anywhere but home with her feeling like that. So now I look forward to watching this PPV with COVID Round 2 for me.

Since Viggo Mortensen appears to be acting again, or maybe he's just working again to do another Cronenberg movie, he also wouldn't be a bad choice.

Yeah, that last part is fair. I think when presented with the prospect of NJPW vs AEW you think they're going to shoot for the moon despite there being many issues to work out. I started thinking about it more after listening to WOR today and I now feel like the booking for this was pretty messed up. So many of these guys are coming in without much build and while let's be generous and say 75% of AEW's audience is smart enough to know who Ospreay or Ishii or Jay White are, that's leaving 25% that have no clue and to them the only thing that sets these NJPW guys apart from folks on Dark who make the occasional appearance is the NJPW name and even that's not enough. We could have had a stronger build to Blood and Guts instead of putting everything on hold for 3 weeks to a month. It also makes me think that this PPV was rushed and I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because travel restrictions were relaxed even more or maybe it had to do with something else, but you could have held off on this PPV until next year and from now until then you introduce your audience to the key players who will be involved. More than anything, while I don't think TK is flopping as a booker, I do think he needs to take many steps back to get a very broad view of everything that is happening and then start tightening things up. Figure out who your main players are going to be and don't make the audience feel like it's going to be a bunch of people from NXT or WWE. I keep beating the drum for Kris Statlander, but she is a star in the making and should have the same rocket strapped to her back that Britt Baker had. The major difference between the two though is that Kris kinda sucks on promos. Even still, Jungle Boy was even worse and he's managed to be someone who can cut a decent promo now. Maybe it's just the booking for this PPV, but it has made the overall storylines feel all over the place or kinda samey and it's only being buoyed by excellent performers. That's all well and good until those performers start dropping like flies from injuries.

That's also pretty consistent with Vader in the comic books. Sometimes arrogant, sometimes has a conscience, winds up making unforced errors.

This may be weird, but I could see Idris Elba pulling it off.

Similar question, what’s the worst arena you’ve been to for wrestling? I think my is the Target Center in Minneapolis. I went there for Summerslam 99 and that place, at least back then, just goes straight up. If you look down you’re practically looking at the top of the person in front of you. It’s the steepest arena I’ve ever been in so mid level seats wound up feeling like nosebleeds.

I think I did almost all of that. I’d like to play it with my daughter because she’s getting burnt out playing Genshin Impact. Ah well, there’s always Lost Ark.