JLowe

Nah, it’s a sad thing but a good thing. The big guy being honored on multiple shows is a fitting tribute (and probably the first of many).

@HarryArchieGusi hope they keep taping some matches before Dynamites because I want to see Athena break some porcelain hussy live, dammit!

I won’t be watching until Sunday probably (will be in San Antonio for wife’s birthday) but it dawned on me that we’ll be seeing the DEAN sign again.

I think it was last week where I said that Adam Cole is the Wish version of Jay White. I want Starks to get it, he deserves a big win if they're not going to get him truly involved in a title run.

I saw the news last night on a quick Twitter scroll and had to keep everything inside as it was my wife's birthday and she was having a good day and we were making the most of it. I don't know if DEAN~! literally invented the tilde-bang, but as far as I'm concerned he did. I forgot until reading this thread that terms I use in my regular life like "a million billion stars" and "number one and the best" were Dean-isms. On the other hand, I know that Dean coined the term "tiny paunts" that I use to this day when I watch wresting. I "met" Dean on RSPW, before there was even a RSPW-M. In my mind, he was the person who created RSPW-M, but that's probably not 100% accurate. We shared a love of Juventud Guerrera, Magnum Tokyo (tiny paunts!), guys punching guys in the face, and the original Women of Wrestling. Like so many others, I asked Dean for some tapes and he obliged with a wad of puroresu, including Toryumon and GAEA, which was my first real exposure to joshi. edit to add And a best of Survival Tobita tape, how could I forget that! I've only ever gotten one warning from the mods on this board. It was from Dean, for making personal attacks in a thread in the Music folder. It was like disappointing my "cool" older brother, and I've tried to behave myself every since. Intense fandom can be very toxic, full of gatekeepers. DEAN~! was the opposite of that, he was the very best of what you can be when you are passionate about something. Thinking of his family and his friends in this hard time. I hope the memories we share about this great man give them some comfort.

Someone on Twitter (maybe Bix) said that he was a DVDVR member (or former member).

I thought last night's show was really well-booked and laid out, just a great balance of in-ring action and story-telling, backstage promos, and an all-timer of a vignette. Only real issue with the 8-man was not having room for Bandido to do his thing. I LOl'd when Taz said that OC looks like Jake Hager's mini-me. 2.0 did quality stooging, Garcia and Strong had some moments, OC was excellent FiP, Cole was protected but was able to advance his storyline with Jericho. Not a MotN candidate but quality blend of action and angles. BCC promo kicked ass, Bryan didn't say Amateur as a bonus. Willow-Saraya was pretty much what I thought. Willow is over. Saraya isn't. The Shida swerve felt a little like the later days of the NWO but she's credible. I guess Hayter is able to at least scrap some. HoB Pure rules trios promo was interesting. My wife was very curious about Julia Hart, so I said "she's that meme with the cheerleader who listens to Joy Division once" Trios de Mayo was ok, definitely established the pecking order for the most part (poor Hobbs). I am intrigued by Lucha Bros and HdVikingo as a trios, although a Fenix-Vikingo match sounds more fun. Acclaimed vs HoB is definitely a styles clash. Kenny really didn't need to say anything after Callis, because he isn't up to that level of promo. Starks-Juice was good, and a clean pin was a nice surprise! The Chicken farm vignette was one of the greatest wrestling vignettes I've ever seen. Weird and hilarious while also doing a lot to move several angles along. Only issue is that Satnam is now firmly a gentle giant, that kid was so super chill in his giant mitts. Main was another example of a good match that also succeeded in telling multiple stories and moving the angle along. Teared up when I first saw the DEAN sign. I paused and explained it all to my wife and had a hard time not choking up a little.

Skye is getting the ROH push to be Athena's next porcelain hussy boss challenger, so that makes sense for ROH. Both Rocky and Best Friends have been on ROH the last couple of weeks so maybe that goes there as well.

Makes me sad, I enjoyed the YouTube shows as a way to see some of the lesser names, try-outs, and random enhancement people. Very 80s/90s syndicated feel. I was a big Cult of Worldwide~! guy, you need your JTTS to be credible and that was a way to do so, plus the unpredictability of two JTTS facing off was a bonus. I'm also sad because now I likely won't get to see people like Emi Sakura or the Wingmen live in Austin at the AEW show.

I used the opportunity to watch the 22 minute, 4-match Dark from a couple of weeks back. Maki Itoh does nothing for me. I get that it's basically a comedy gimmick (at least in the US) but she makes me roll my eyes. Dean said Ashley D'Amboise is the new woman getting the very long, slow Skye Blue build, and I've enjoyed her work thus far. She did a good job within the confines of the match. Menard getting up from the desk to wrestle his match was funny somehow, although I kind of wish they had found a way to keep him on the headset commentating while he was on the apron. For a minute, I was wanting to see some big guy wrasslin' from Hager and Clayton but they also both kinda stink so maybe I'm glad it didn't really happen. Very much a match that happened to promote the match against the Acclaimed. Party Hardy v. enhancement was a greatest hits squash and nothing more, another match to promote a match on the bigger show. Main event of Your Highness Emi Sakura vs. Mizuki, who is basically someone doing Riho cosplay right down to most of the moves. Sorry, I don't watch joshi so I don't know who people really are and all they said was Mizuki is someone's tag partner in DDT? All that said, it was a good, stiff match with a highlight of Mizuki hitting a solid double stomp from the top rope to the floor after Emi splatted herself doing her crossbody splash against the ring steps. Emi won on a roll-up rather than her finisher. I kind of miss the "We Will Chop You" but I truly enjoy ass-beater Emi.

The Pillars tag definitely feels so much like a go-home PPV match that I was convinced the PPV was this weekend. Also, like almost everybody else, I thought the cage match was this week. The 8-man makes no sense to me other than that maybe Cole wasn't ready for significant in-ring time so they devised this to help him shake the rust while keeping him on TV due to All Access. Saraya and Jade have been talking shit back and forth on Twitter so there is some potential for Jade to make a run-in/save even though it would make no sense as she and Willow have been rivals with Jade as the proverbial hill that Willow is trying to conquer (and should have by now, but that dead horse is glue at this point). They might have to do something drastic with Hayter's injury although I've never heard how serious it actually is. All that said, I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that Saraya beats Willow by cheating and interference, someone like Skye runs in to help and gets a beatdown, and then 3 minutes later Britt makes a save. Is Buddy out of the country again? The trios battle royale feels like filler. I think Starks and Juice will be good, but Starks-Switchblade would be great.

Jericho-Jarrett dream match baby!

Use the fucking PR department to issue a response, FFS.

That and "What" are the worst of the many lasting legacies of WWE/the Attitude era.

I have been thinking the same thing the last couple of weeks but didn't say it because I wasn't watching AEW during the early days to compare.

Revisiting the 2007 writers' strike on Twitter. It pretty much killed the show Heroes as they rushed a new, short, terrible storlyine arc for what was only their second season. Another young NBC show, Friday Night Lights, also had their second season during the writers strike that included a ridiculous murder storyline and a new character that were never mentioned again when the third season started.

A local comedy troupe who has done MST3K style movie riffs for years started doing live riffs of 911 Lone Star on Twitch during the height of the Covid shutdowns. I've never watched the show but even just the screenshots and plot devices they have in their twitter gets across just how ridiculous it is.

Finally watched this and it was awesome, full Worldwide point and then some. Mafiosa is Valentina Rossi who was a regular Dark/Elevation jobber. I googled this to confirm and then went to her Twitter because she had some...interesting photos...and apparently her and Harley have wrestled a few times this year for other promotions. I agree with basically everything Dean said especially the part about Jake Logan making that match watchable.

You will never go broke appealing to the lowest common denominator

Raw and Smackdown's weekly ratings are lower than Nitro was when WCW was sold to McMahon. Mainstream wrestling fan, based on TV viewership, is less than 1% of the adult population of the United States. I know that Peacock skews things and there is a global market, but "record business" has always seemed suspect to me. What I will give WWE credit for is convincing the general audience that they are the only pro wrestling company and managing to make Wrestlemania into a major event that even non-fans are aware of and might even pay money to go for "the spectacle." I'd definitely rather watch a company at least take a chance on elevating it's younger stars instead of having the same champion for 1000 days, fighting the same 3-4 dudes.

I don't know, I'd like to think that if Swerve had that much control he would've picked better Associates

I swear I’m going to pay for this soon. Loved the Athena match, she made Lady Frost look great while still beating the shit out of her. I think Matt D pointed out how Athena will mix up ways to hit her big moves and today she did a nice reversal to hit her massive forearm. I loved the Kingdom segment. Did a great job of establishing their history and their ambitions. I hope Maria is working with the younger women on promos. Best Friends have a squash which I’m not sure is the best use of them. Evil Uno-Stu vs. Trustbusters was fine, nice to see Sonny Kiss. Some nice double-team moves from Dark Order and I appreciated the announcers (the best in the business) telling the history of Uno-Stu as a tag team in RoH because to me they’re comedy jobbers who all of the sudden are killers. I don’t really care for The Righteous from what I’ve seen and I’m done with cult factions for the rest of my life. My girl Skye Blue vs. Diamanté was easily Skye’s best AEW match. Stiff, competitive, some nice moves, and a good flash pin. Wonder if Skye could learn a Shining Wizard. Athena-Skye should be a good match and a good learning experience. I didn’t hate a Brian Cage match. Some nice hope spots for Ruffin. Rocky-Lee was great, pretty similar wrestlers that matched well and I wasn’t sure who was going to win. A Pure match will be a lot of fun. Main was a lot of fun, made both Gringo Loco and Blake Christian look like lucha stars. The open mirror/duck/reversal sequence was well paced and not overdone. GL is a fantastic base who can also bust out some wild stuff, and Blake was able to do lots of rope work and lucha shit. I think I’m going with Rocky-Lee as MOTN.

Doesn’t it make her look like an idiot to be a veteran who is incapable of beating someone without her finishing move?

D’Andre Swift to the Eagles in exchange for a 2025 4th rounder. Also included is Philly’s #219 7th round pick this year swapped for Detroit’s #249 7th round pick. Quite a steal potentially for the Eagles. Also, yet another former Georgia Bulldog.

Henry can have a finishing move called The Main Event where, well, you can guess what happens beforehand.