DeadEffect

It was, but at the same time I wonder if that was the intention of the comment. I kind of read it as Colt talking a lot of shit about legal action and when Punk threatened the same in return, Colt then brought up the shared bank account as a reason to dissuade Punk from it. Maybe I just interpreted it wrong. The whole thing just seems very odd. The Elite seem like a pack of spoilt brats who like to talk shit and Punk seems like a guy who can't handle that sort of thing anymore and has zero tact. I don't condone the rant and what follows, but looking at things from his perspective, as an actual major star coming in, he could have been the stereptype of a guy who only works main events, never loses and never shows weakness, but he's worked with younger talent, made them look good and has brought new eyes to the product while outwardly promoting a positive image of the company. If he'd genuinely tried to be the team player and then this shit started, I could see why that as a guy already known for having a quick temper, that this might set that off. The Bucks have openly said that they push people's buttons to get a response, going back to the Booker T thing over a decade ago. Or the shit they used to do on Twitter, but they do strike me as guys who really don't like it when people bite back at them as well.

Fuck yeah this rules, CCW has become one of my fave indy feds and most of that is on the back of watching Kilynn King have hate filled brawls with people.

Keegan is from the weird subsect of Australian wrestling. We have the promotions and talent that have been known on a larger scale, feds like MCW and PWA, or guys like Robbie Eagles and Adam Brooks who have big internet presence, but then there's guys like Keegan who just do lots of smaller shows, racking up a lot of work and occasionally getting matches with bigger names like here. ASW is a weird fed in the sense it'll take guys from those two worlds and put them in matches and see what happens, there was one where they had Slex who's a 20 year vet and done tours with NOAH, wrestling a guy called Hell Yeah who's a hokey comedy character and the match looked intriguing. It's a shame that this looks to be Keegan's last match due to injury, but it's a very good match to go out on if that's the case.

When I was first discovering extreme metal in the 90's on a local level as a teenager, D666 were one of the first bands I saw when I was like 15, even at that age I thought a lot of the things KK Warslut did and said were fucked up and I soon moved on to much better bands with much better people. Bands like Armoured Angel, Alchemist and Blood Duster were killer bands and good dudes, a huge influence on me and around the age of 17-18 (so '99-00ish) I really started getting into hardcore and stuff like Mindsnare and Toe To Toe, or seeing lots of killer female bands like Nitocris. Our scenes are actually pretty diverse. I still think Alchemist were one of the greatest metal bands of all time. As for the far right/Nazi influences some bands have, I think it's two fold. Firstly racist and fascist political organisations have openly existed in Australian society for years, even when they're treated like a joke by the overwhelming majority they're still seen. Second, a lot of those bands seemed to heavily rip off a lot of the European black metal bands wholesale in what they do, so I have no doubt some of the fascist and violent attitudes of those bands rubbed off on the bands you mentioned. Burzum and Impaled Nazarene seemed to be big influences. Bit of a waffle there haha. Nowadays the punk, metal and hardcore scenes here are actually very diverse and far right bullshit gets stomped out pretty fast. D666 were supposed to return here for a tour a few years back and basically the entire scene and venues told them to fuck off.

One of my annoyances with the film was the musical sequences had way too much Guns'n'Roses, the opening bit with Welcome To The Jungle was awesome, but the rest seemed a bit forced in. The most fitting bit of soundtrack in the entire film was Dio during the credits haha.

Been going to as many shows as I can since live music was allowed to kick back into gear here, but now international bands are touring here again it's been a really good time. Getting to see The Bronx play a tiny little dive bar that made the gig feel like a house party was really cool, but then on a complete flip side I saw both Chelsea Wolfe and Emma Ruth Rundle play stunning singer songwriter sets on a rainy Sunday night, the right mix of beauty and melancholy. And so many local punk and metal shows, so so many and it's all been magnificent. The Australian punk/metal/hardcore scenes are just killing it now.

A little, but I also took that as a reason to correct the path that Thor was on as well. To have a similar experience to Gorr when encountering other gods, but in contrast to Gorr's quest for vengeance it kinda set Thor on the path of doing the right thing himself.

I just got back from watching it about an hour ago, I genuinely loved it, whether that's because this was my first Marvel cinema experience since Endgame, or that I love the source material in the comics, or maybe that it was a fun escape when we live in a world where fun things are more important than ever. Bits of it felt rushed in part and the switch from the silly to the point where the story needed to carry a bit more weight was a little rough, but I found it to be a very fun and very enjoyable watch. I liked that it basically became a full circle for the character of Thor himself, tying in with the quote at the end of Endgame of him having no path and then finding himself. The interaction between Hemsworth and Portman was the best of the movie and I wish we had more of that and a little less of the goofy bits, as fun as they are.

She's usually a valet but has made a lot of effort to improve when she does wrestle, kinda finding out who she is. That was far and away the best match she's ever had, the suplexes and shit talking won me over. She pops up every now and then the Death Match Down Under fed on IWTV.

One for @DEANand his penchant for old school wrestling in 2022. Mayhem Pro is a small Australian fed that serves mostly as a vehicle for young guys to have their initial matches with a few Aussie veterans mixed in. This event runs in a small regional town called Colac, a few hours outside of Melbourne, the whole show is fun but the main event is where it's at with the local hero Sketch putting his career on the line against the champion and big city dickhead in JXT, with the two facing in a cage. Crowd is mostly really loud and excitable kids, along with a bunch of drunken country guys yelling abuse at the heels. Whether the show as a whole translates on video is another matter, but live this is one of my fave shows of 2022 and the main event is a lot of fun, the actions of JXT and his goons leading to the entire babyface roster wanting to beat the shit out of them is so old school and I loved it.

Fuck yeah this match ruled.

Maximum The Hormone? Fuck yeah!

Agreed. He has a massive influence. One of the biggest influences in Aussie wrestling would also be Col Devarney who not only trained Hartley Jackson, Havok, Damian Slater and others, but also has a massive hand in what eventually becomes EPW in Perth.

The majority of good wrestlers in Sydney over the last 10-15 years have had at least some training from Madison. PWA and their sister fed of Newcastle Pro have produced some absurdly good talents over the years. I'd say between people trained directly or who have spent major time there, Madison has probably had a hand in training 50 good wrestlers in the last 15 years, that might be a bit conservative.

Some recent Aussie wrestling. Delta is powerlifter turned wrestler, from the same promotion that trained Rhea Ripley and is very much in the same vein. Cherry is a PWA product which is arguably the biggest promotion in Australia. Two folks who are still very new to wrestling, Cherry debuted at the end of 2019 and Delta in 2020 and this was a match where they went out in front of a crowd that didn't know either and just won the audience over. Cherry is a "student of wrestling" and is constantly trying to get instructions from her textbook, Delta is a surly monster who has little time for these shenanigans. Live, this was one of my fave matches of the year so far, nothing super epic but fun character driven wrestling in front of a hot crowd.

Have seen both Pirotta and Indi since pretty much day one, Indi I think fits the WWE mould a lot better, she just goes full on into any character thing they throw at her. Pirotta is an interesting one as she seemed like the perfect WWE signing based on her physical gifts, but she's never been able to connect with audiences as either menacing or likable. I'm assuming she'll return to Australia and be treated as a massive deal, but to be honest I don't think she's even top 5 of women's wrestlers in Australia. I'm curious to where Kai goes, if AEW were to ever feature a women's tag division, reforming her indy team with Ruby could be damn good, And she'd make an excellent challenger of the month to whoever the champion is. I think Impact would be a good fit for her.

When it goes up on IWTV, today's DMDU show had a fantastic main event of Robbie Eagles vs Kid Valiant. Eagles is usually a standard babyface high flyer/technical wrestler in New Japan, but on his most recent run of shows he's been mostly wrestling young up and comers and is the surly, cranky veteran. Valiant has just turned 19 and is getting a bit of buzz in Australia, so Eagles comes to Valiant's home fed and proceeds to kick the shit out of him. When his opponent fires back, Eagles decides that destroying Valiant's leg in the most fucked up ways he can think of is the best step to take. Aussie wrestling is in kind of an odd place post Covid lockdowns, a lot of new faces starting to come to the fore.

He's a good wrestler and had done some great work, but unfortunately that's far offset by the fact that he's an abusive shitbag of a bloke that got caught out being a piece of shit and a lot of people have gone scorched Earth on removing him from indy scenes. I don't know about the UK as much, but in Australia and his native NZ, despite having wrestled for years he no longer exists.

RIot City is my favourite Aussie wrestling promotion, the whole show is very solid but the main event is fantastic. Smart mouthed dickhead Rocky Menero and his proteges The Parea have turned on Menero's friend of nearly 20 years Tyler Daniels, in seeking revenge Daniels enlists the team of Gods And Monsters, the semi retired former champion Brodie Marshall and having his first match back in two years after beating cancer, Grimm Basso. Old school to the bone, Rocky is due a beating but they make the crowd wait for it. @DEANI reckon this is right up your alley.

This one hits hard. Meat Loaf is someone with an odd legacy in Australia, a lot of younger people know him best for performing at the half time show of the AFL Grand Final in 2011 and being absolutely horrible in his performance, but for a lot of us who grew up in the 70's and 80's, Bat Out Of Hell was a massive part of our childhoods. I was born in 1982 and much of my childhood was spent in the family car with my Dad driving and that cassette in the tape deck and being played loud. I honestly think that this record was the first real exposure I had to loud rock music and as I got older was a gateway into heavier music. Even now all those years later, "All Reved Up And No Place To Go" is a fucking killer tune.

Yeah, especially after just about every other sporting event made at least some concessions too, people are just sick of the AO. Some of my friends who are tennis fans have said the biggest frustration is that other players have been refused entry on vaccination grounds, so making a specific exemption for him just reeks of different rules for those with wealth. Personally, I've been a die hard ALP supporter since I was a teenager and I'm pushing 40, but they have very little to offer, while Morrison and his mob IMO are the absolute worst of the shitpile that is Australian politics in 2022. A lot of this seems like a desperate ploy on Morrison's part to divert attention from the massive shitfight that is the current RAT situation before the election. When even conservative strongholds like the Murdoch press are starting to question his actions, then he's in big trouble come May 21. If Albanese can be even remotely competent as opposition he'll be in the box set, but that's a big if as he's proven to be pretty pissweak since taking over the role.

As someone who lives in Melbourne, the anti tennis sentiment has been building for a while anyway. Last year, we got sent back into lockdowns around this time while the tennis was allowed to continue without crowds but with no other restrictions which really pissed a lot of people off. We have had a lot of drama the last few months with the QAnon/conspiracy/aggressively anti-vax crowd and I think seeing our respective authorities give yet another rich bastard a free pass was the straw that broke the camels back and the collective anger has been furious. Even amongst people who support the AO regardless, the amount of people requesting their money back or refusing to support the event has been surprising. We're in a situation here where the mess of how both our federal government and the individual states have handled things is that pathetic, that the cancellation of his visa seems like a ploy from Scott Morrison to rescue some popularity at a time where public opinion of him is at an all time low which isn't good with an election on the horizon. When people can't travel from state to state without getting negative tests and/or quarantining, while the entirety of Western Australia is cut off from the rest of the country due to their Covid response and where a lot of businesses and individuals are facing uncertain futures, letting Djokovic in is just adding fuel to the fire.

As an NBL fan, this made me happy live. Melbourne United are pretty much universally despised by most fans over here.

Both these guys have been bloody good for years, Basso is one of the founders of Riot City Wrestling and IMO they're probably the best promotion in Australia, just hard hitting and no bullshit pro wrestling goodness. Boomer is probably the most underrated guy in the country, has been around for 15+ years and though he doesn't wrestle in a lot of places, he's just consistently awesome whenever he does.