JLowe

This thread and the WWE Network thread got me to start watching the Mid-South episodes from the beginning (which is December 1981, says it’s season 3). Having watched some of the World Class episodes from the same era, there is a fair amount of overlap particularly in the jobbers. Anyway, there are a lot of the same people in the front row at the various tapings. I noticed that one of the women, who must have been in her late 40s/early 50s, has a 35mm camera and is taking photos. Wondering if she was with a newspaper or freelancing for magazines, and if so if her archives are available anywhere. If she’s just a fan, it would be wild for someone to try and track her family down to see if there are still photos/negatives.

The last point was my immediate thought.

ShutUpAndTakeMyMoney.gif

Living down here in Texas and having fond memories of World Class in the mid-late 80s on ESPN, I started watching the early stuff on Peacock and yeah, it's mostly terrible. I do like young face Bundy with hair just as an oddity.

I'm going to disagree. I think he's a very good worker (especially as he knows how to wrestle as a true shitheel) whose mic work is heavily overrated by his fan base because his boos lets him cuss and say shooty things.

Thanks for that info!

I thought it might be a botch and that Andretti was going to be injured. Cool looking move but lots of potential to go very, very wrong.

It’s like we’ve been saying that this past Dynamite felt more like a go-home show for the PPV, so next week’s is just going to be random to set up the remaining matches and buy-in. I too really hope they actually give Avalon some time. I can’t imagine that they’ll totally squash Hardy, although the way he pulled off the stipulations makes me think he’s going to lie down to get back at Stokely.

Finally saw Billie-Emi from Tuesday and loved it. I love Emi when she does her comedy spots but I really love when she does the more serious thing like this and Hayter. The sky is the limit for Billie...and speaking of sky, her and Skye Blue need to be a tag team. One thing I have noticed is that Starks has drawn hardway blood in at least two of her matches so far, and I think it’s from still being green rather than being too snug.

Not just that, but saying that Yuta, OC, and Garcia are indistinguishable is just inane.

Mark Davis got pudgy and it worked because he was an ass-beater tonight. I enjoyed the opener a lot, felt like the Bucks reeled in some of their more ridiculous stuff. Now bring on Aussie Open and Top Flight! We all expected Toni-Willow to be stiff and excellent and it was. No complaints other than giving it a little more time. Never cared for Lance Archer, don’t care now, wondering who they’re heating him up for. Main was solid, Sammy is a heat machine, Andretti is an occasionally sloppy spot machine, told a story, systematic cheating, right person won. Next week’s ladder match is going to be really awesome and somebody is going to do something really stupid.

Helicopter parents for blue-chip HS quarterbacks is a big thing in recruiting.

For me, it is physically unwatchable due to the camerawork and lighting. I read descriptions of these great matches but when I try and watch them I get nauseous and almost vertiginous.

Sure, and definitely doesn't meet the definition of "psycho" but more a reminder that even the Mannings had their moments.

Didn’t Eli refuse to play for certain teams when he was drafted?

Dean had this: http://deathvalleydriver.com/forum/index.php?/topic/10349-aew-dynamite-2222023/&do=findComment&comment=1280047

I thought that both the MJF-Danielson segment last night (other than the self-harm comments) and the Mox-Hangman bit at the end were both very effective builds for the PPV, but maybe could have been saved for next week for the actual finial pre-PPV show? Those are 2 of your main draws, including your main event.

You’re not alone, he’s on an 8-month roll right now and a top 5 if not top 3 guy right. Also all I know of Fountains of Wayne is that the main guy ended up writing most all the songs for Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, which was a mostly excellent show with amazing music.

Wheeler-OC was great, at first I thought it was thrown together too fast but they did a good job of putting it across in ring as sort of a culmination of the original split, with Yuta showing how he’s gotten way tougher and thus making OC have to fight a lot harder. Whoever called it a great 3 act story was spot on. Would be interesting if Claudio/BCC toughness eventually costs Yuta the Pure title for closed fists. Honestly, I wouldn’t mind both dropping their ROH belts and getting into the tag title scene. Starks-Jericho promo was very Bugs Bunny-Daffy Duck, let’s see what happens with the match. What was next, Acclaimed-Firm? Max’s rap was good, Big Bill was funny. Christian-Jack Perry was a decent brawl but I’m not invested in the story. Saraya-Skye did a decent job of putting over Skye, who totally carried the match and dealt with multiple Saraya botches. Post-match was more straightforward than my convulsed booking, but I still think Ruby forms a third group. PPV could be good if they focus on Ruby and Hayter. I liked the second half of the MJF promo which he mostly stole from greater talkers, the suicide bit was disgusting. Brawl was solid, I want Bryan to win but I know he won’t and MJF is going to say lots more dumb 4chan shit and wrestle every 6 weeks. Battle Royale, as always, was a mess but set up some matches I want to see, ok mostly Aussie Open-Top Flight. Satnam was fun. Fenix lasted longer than Penta. Going by the graphic, 2.0 is going to win next week. Have no opinion about the announcement or Adam Cole, other than I don’t think I’ll watch the show. But it makes the Network happy and I guess it can help turn Cole face, I don’t know. Main...I honestly thought it should’ve been more of a squash. Seeing UNO’s loose mask early in the night made me realize he was going to bleed, and boy did he ever, especially in the final choke sequence.

Eh, Skye did all the work

Saraya/Skye storywise has some potential depending on where they really want to go with all this. Like, if Saraya and Storm do a beatdown and try to paint an L on Skye, do Hayter and Baker save her as an AEW original, or ignore her because she's still low-card? Ruby and Skye have a little history as a tag-team, so what if it's Ruby who comes out to save her and then points out that Hayter and Britt left her cold? I think there is a lot of story potential with Ruby, Willow, Skye, and some others saying "hey, Britt and Jayme, it wasn't that long ago that you were cheating and double-teaming us and now you want us on your side? Screw all y'all"

AEW is coming back to Austin on May 17th, this time at a new venue. The Moody Center is right in the middle of Austin, on the edge of the UT campus; school will be out which means easier parking but less potential for student sales. I just saw Springsteen there and the beer prices are much higher than the Cedar Park Center, BUT I won't have to drive 25 miles and spend $20 in tolls to get there in time for the Dark taping.

fuego-Juice was fine, I guess being in Laredo means we get guys in masks even if they’re white dudes from Alabama, and heat for threatening to unmask them. Kind of surprised that Juice is stuck with opening YouTube shows. Athena beats someone’s ass, always fun, nothing new. Big Bill and Lee Moriarty look as though they’re going to squash some dudes, but it ends up being a perfectly fine, competitive match. Big Bill shows some personality and cockiness. Women’s trios was pretty disappointing given the participants. Shafir has improved to the point of not being a total detriment to a match or her opponents. Madison Rayne in-ring continues to be the weirdest signing but since she’s mostly YouTube or JTTS it’s not a huge deal. Very little of Willow in this match, and the whole thing was just kind of there. Hobbs squashes some dude, gives his some stiff clobbering and then hits a particularly gnarly spinebuster. The literal book stuff is weird. 10-man was chaotic, fair amount of comedy, the kind of thing to make the fans happy because they get to see Dark Order, Best Friends, and Matt Hardy wrestle. The announcers totally missed that Butcher and Blade were part of the Hardy Family not even a year ago. Oh boy, Lucha Brothers are back.. Funny moment from Tony Nese where he has Penta in the tree of woe and instead of a dropkick or cannonball he stops short, lies on his back, and kicks him while doing bicycle knee touches. Not much of Rey Fenix in this one, but he gets some impressive air and hang time on a cutter. I assume they’re going to be one of the teams in the PPV 4-way.

Finally saw this last night (it’s been a long, mostly bad few months) and wish I had seen it in theaters if just for the underwater scenes. As a Mesoamerican Archaeologist (by education) I really liked the origin of Namor and the Tlakoni (?) being a Yucatecan group with a flower in a sacred cenote and motivation being colonization and genocide of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. I also liked that it wasn’t Atlantis given how that myth has been turned into racist pseudoscience. I was hoping they would go with multiple Black Panthers, including Okoye, but I guess it has to be a member of the royal family. I thought Wright did very well and showed emotional growth and maturity as a character, hopefully she can do so in life. Angela Bassett was a showstopper and I’m glad they gave her such a major role.

Just got back from seeing it. I enjoyed it a lot, and I think it’s a good launch point for Phase 5. I thought the CGI was fine to excellent, I only remember one short scene where it looked very obvious green-screen. Some scenes had a very Star Wars feel and for just a hot second I thought they might slip in an Easter Egg teasing that the galaxy far, far away is part of the Quantumverse.