JLowe

Yikes.

Thing is, does MJF really have the love and respect of the locker room? He fucked over Wardlow big time and ruined his huge moment. He doesn’t really work with the other guys, saving himself for a special attraction.

<Hager voice> I LIKE this show. Opener was a lot of fun, other than maybe burying Singh (who bumps like a guy 2/3 his size) a bit. Bowens gets to shine, we get a lot of comedy, the faces win and get to scissor. Texas Tornado match was hella fun. Vance was the weak link but hit a .4 Ruby and didn’t look lost. Crowd brawl to start was kind of weak, mostly walking around. I think we’re maybe getting Claudio-Rush at the ROH PPV and that might get my money. Briscoe-Woods was also enjoyable, Mark is fun and I’m a fan of Woods and wish he got to be more of a Steiner Brothers mashup. Also, I had been thinking recently that I wasn’t missing the Lucha Brothers so OF COURSE. Best MJF promo I’ve seen, an actual excellent traditional heel promo and I, wondering who wrote the script for him. Chris Daniels comes out to do a 5 minute promo for the upcoming ROH programming. Also, that reminds me how awesome the bloody taped post-match Danielson promo was, take my money. Perry-Cage was a match that happened and a post-match angle that happened. Funny to see them slowly phasing out “Jungle Boy”, but will the fans rebel if they get rid of Tarzana? Sabian-Page was also a match that happened. Post-match was top notch work from Mox and solid work from Page, more take my money. Also, I can’t take Evil Uno seriously as a badass. I watch Dark/Elevation. I guess Sabian and Swolverine serve a role as JTTS but I’m tired of them. I don’t have that AEW original loyalty, and in fact was shocked to find out that Kip Sabian was pushed early on. Main was a perfectly fine 3-way in the way that there’s a lot of action, a lot of shenanigans, and a lot of awkwardness. I kind of expected Thunder Rosa. Saraya is cringe. Ruby deserves a belt, but with Jade squatting on the TNT title and Athena kicking ass with ROH, not sure what there is for her.

Two very good matches and a lot of squashes for Elevation tonight. Highlight was Emi and Nyla vs. Skye Blue and Madison Rayne. Vickie was way over in El Paso, of course. Not a whole lot of the usual shenanigans in this one, it was more of the Emi who went blow for blow with Jayme Hayter, and now I really want to see Emi vs. Skye Blue getting some time on Dynamite or Rampage. If you only watch one match from tonight, it should be this one. Yuka Sakazaki vs. Vertvixen was the other good, semi-competitive match. Yuka has some surprising power for being so small, I guess she truly is a magical girl. Vertvixen has a lot of promise. The Big Bill squash is pretty fun, and there is a long, strange backstage segment with Ethan Page and Matt Hardy. Otherwise, nothing worth taking time to watch.

Trugoy's death hits hard. He's only a couple years older than me. I wore out my cassette of 3 Feet High and Rising years ago, at least still have it on CD. I still remember staying with my Dad and stepmom in Queens, and seeing the Potholes in my Lawn video on U-68 and being shook at this new style of hip-hop. I only got to see them once, on an anniversary tour for 3 Feet High, an album they came to hate along with the "hip-hop hippies" association. They were still great, even if they changed one of the lines in "Me, Myself, and I" to "I really hate this fucking song". The fact that they finally got control of their back catalog and their early classics were going to be re-released and on streaming services for a new generation makes this even worse.

To quote Evan Dorkin’s classic Milk and Cheese: “Gin makes a man mean”. I can’t have more than 1 G&T on a rare occasion because it makes me super chippy.

I’m a little buzzed but The Outrunners are fucking great and also to me 100% proof that AEW reads DVDVR and even throws us a bone occasionally.

Ah the only cactus juice I can stomach is sotol, figured mezcal because of the bottles but I was mistakenly thinking Oaxaca style pottery was that blue and white

Gonna guess that’s some overpriced trendy mezcal?

Not trying to be a contrarian, but I liked MJF-Takeshita just a little more than Rush-Bryan

Just rewatched the Rush-Danielson match with my full attention (and muting during PiP so I can focus on the tiny screen a little better) and I liked it a lot more, except the unprotected headbutt by Rush. Right after Bryan bladed Rush grabbed him in a hold with a camera closeup and you could see the gash pulled apart some, gnarly. The throw from the apron to the floor leading into the long PiP segment worked really well, as it allowed for a lot of Rush heel stooging and Danielson recovering to kill time. Only mistake was having the Bulls Horns fakeout during PiP. Bryan's tope by the corner was nuts. And we didn't get a cord choke spot, which is worth an extra 1/4* for me. The Hayter-Bunny match was also quite good, very stiff. I think the trouble started with the faceslam on the apron, and then Bunny's foot slid on the throw which led to her not being able to complete a good rotation and Hayter falling right on top of her face. And yet Bunny still sold the shit out of the lariat finisher, even though Hayter definitely held back on the impact.

The OC-Taiga match saved that show. Such a great match and nice to see OC have to use some mat skills to sneak a win. Aftermath at least ended the show with faces on top, guess Acclaimed are sliding back down the card. The opening trios didn’t do much for me, feels a bit like Claudio and Yuta are spinning their wheels until the ROH tapings and Mox not having anything real to do after carrying the company on his back through 2022. But I’m a huge BCC fan, so I’m biased Congrats to Ruby for having the second or third best Shafir match and making it through without injury. I guess they had Shafir to get Vickie some TV time in El Paso. Speaking of, obviously Rush had a huge match but would have been nice to see Bandido or another luchador in El Paso (and Laredo next week). Backstage stuff was mostly fine to good. The Impractical Jokers segment, on the other hand, reminded me of the worst of late-era WCW. Grateful for the fast-forward button. Jungle Jack does little for me, that match seemed more suited for Dark. When I see people mention him as the potential top babyface I wonder what I’m missing other than his name and his face. Granted, I’ve only been watching for 18 months but he seems like his best role is a tag-team specialist. Again, main event was excellent and another example of OC being in the top 3-5 in the company right now. Meshed real well with Moriarty on the mat and in reversals. Got his spots in but within the story of the match. Sold the arm throughout, to the point of realizing he wasn’t going to win with the Orange Punch and needed to get a flash pin.

Thamel had no idea what he was talking about and was used as an info dump from one of the parties for leverage. I honestly thought it would be this season, always knew it wouldn't go until 2025 just because of the TV deals.

I saw Gordlow mention in his list but Anthony Bowens has that potential. I still see Claudio and wonder how he wasn't a WWE world champion. He's not ever going to be your top mic guy but he has a lot of in-ring charisma to go with some goofiness that makes him relatable. I like Darby or Eddie as the ones to take down MJF but I also agree that I don't think Darby would ultimately work as your classic top babyface unless you're feeding him monster heels all the time.

Thanks to MJF for that bullshit

That might salvage things some, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t Jarrett-Lethal. Or maybe they’ll remember Gunns are in The Firm and have Jungle Hook take the belts, so I can go ahead and cancel my cable.

MJF-Takeshita was great, MJF really made him look like a main eventer. Too bad everything else MJF does is bush league troll shit. Of course, it seems like Hayter-Bunny ended way early because of the botch and so they probably decided to just let MJF talk even more than normal. Too much of the gauntlet was in PiP, and the ending was pretty lame. I feel like I just read about an angle where someone was locked in a room and was counted out, maybe in the Nitro recaps? I also seem to recall AEW did this last year, maybe with Wardlow? Match was just a bloody slugfest, I guess they decided to just go with attrition at this point because the first couple of matches were so great and from then on it's just been about hurting Danielson as much as possible. Due to work, I wasn't able to pay as much attention to the Trios match as I would have liked but wow what I did see was quite the impressive show by Top Flight and AR Fox especially. I was biting on a couple of those nearfalls. For a minute during the main, I thought they might be working an angle where The Acclaimed are so busy playing to the crowd and Caster being Caster that it was going to cost them against The Gunns who seemed very focused and serious. Might have liked that better. I think this was a dumb title switch and I think they'll quickly regret it.

From your mouth to the Lord's (and the booker's) ears.

Well, that was certainly a choice that was made.

I've mentioned before that the "Jesus" guy who is always in the crowd at the Austin AEW shows is on a Facebook wrestling group I joined. Apparently he and a couple of others from that group were on the Jericho Cruise, and during an Acclaimed match the crowd sang "Ooooh, scissor me Jesus". Saw some fun photos of people with various wrestlers, didn't get any match results.

This would have been a mid grade episode of WCWSN.

That was an episode of Rampage that happened and will easily be forgotten. Opener was ok, the dynamics of the Page/Hardy/Cassidy team being the best part. I’m pretty tired of the super predictable “every member of both teams will hit a big move alternating until everyone is down on the mat”. Wednesday should be a fun spot fest. Pillman Jr. is just bad. His pedestrian mid-80s offense is fine and in character. The problem is that you can see him trying to remember his next step in the match layout, disrupting any kind of flow and requiring a lot of standing around by his opponent. Plus, his moves where he is being reversed are delivered so lightly, like in his head he’s like “this kick to the body is going to be caught and spun around, so my job is just to put my foot out there to be caught” and rather than deliver something that looks like a kick he just kind of sticks his foot out to be caught. Swerve and his strange style was also a bad dance partner. I think the homegrown vs. the intruders is the best way to salvage the poor reception for Saraya and the fans basically willing Hayter and Baker (to a lesser extent) to be faces. I also think Toni Storm is a great heel. The spray paint was a huge mistake and hopefully they abandon that, it’s just too copycat. I hope Ruby Soho tells both teams she’s not there for their nonsense, she’s there for herself and the belt. Main was solid, I was surprised Rush gave Daniels as much as he did, didn’t exactly build him up as the badass who is going to injure Danielson on Wednesday. The ringside cable choke needs to be dropped IMO, at least it was saved for PiP.

I'd say you end up with Jimbo Fisher but A&M did that to themselves.

First time I heard of it was driving on backcountry Ohio roads and seeing farms with signs on the road saying "Cornhole available here" and being EXTREMELY CONFUSED.

I was a huge mark for the poet laureate of the WWF, and loved the frisbees with the poem into the crowd.