Elsalvajeloco

Oh, it's like crack in the 80s and the 90s down here. To me, it's good but not that price for a goddamn cookie good. Luckily, all the instances I've ever ate one is people bringing a box or two to work.

Yeah, McGuirk and Prichard make sense on commentary even though Bruce is absolutely horrendous (he even admitted as such). They're both from that part of the country with Bruce actually being from Houston and having worked for Boesch. The fact that Doherty did commentary and also got to have a brief squash match on the very first SNME show makes me believe Pete Doherty must have had the first intel on Vince McMahon. There is no other explanation.

One of the craziest things I've seen in my lifetime is a few years ago a video came out of some possibly deranged older white woman who got literally uranage'd/hit with the Rock Bottom in the parking lot by a teenage Popeyes employee over some disagreement about 79 cent corn. Let me tell you something...if my life gets possibly ended, it won't be over a shitty side from Popeyes. I can tell you that much is true.

As someone who loves Popeyes (sorry Craig), I am sorry they had to catch that stray.

Thing is though, over the last 30+ years, the Bible Belt has a sneaky population of Mexican-American people and Mexican nationals. So if you did decide to move to New Orleans and were tired of the local fare, you could find pretty good Mexican food. I think the argument though is if you don't give a damn about the local fare, why would need to go to New Orleans? Even though it's mad expensive, you can order the shit on Goldbelly and make it yourself. They give you the instructions. Otherwise, I am guessing there is a bunch of people across the country who consider Popeyes as New Orleans food much like Taco Bell is authentic Tex-Mex.

Paging Lawful Metal. Paging Lawful Metal.

When it comes to being "unique", you're going to have a bunch of cities claiming they did it "first" or are the ones who "innovated". When it comes to food, BBQ would be #1 with a bullet or 1a at the least. New Orleans is always going to have an argument with many cuisines just cause it's one of the first and oldest authentic truly American cities. However, when it comes to modern America where there are clusters of major cities near each other, people might take offense about the statement of there being a bunch of great BBQ around the country. Hell, you might even get shanked if you said something like that. You are going to have a bunch of people who say that the only great BBQ is in their city and their city alone.

Shit...you guys read my mind. As someone who was born and raised in the south, unfairly, all of my picks for best food cities would be the South with New Orleans and Houston towards the tippity top. That said, most folks' choices are going to be based on their food palate. Now that people are moving to different sections of country, it's essentially meaningless now. I live in Northwest Arkansas where the Walton family along with Tyson and other huge companies have set up shop. We have foods from almost literally every part of the country now. Shit, we've been getting an influx of Nashville food stuff just here recently. It's only going to grow in the next 5-10 plus years.

It's crazy how much value Jamie gained over that time when Bea was the former World of Stardom/red belt champ for a little while and was probably more in demand as a talent especially when she was dating Ospreay. I dunno if she wants to sign with AEW and be the Jannetty of the team.

It's a pretty big venue because the capacity went from around or just under 20k to essentially half of that. Plus, it has a fixed staged area. What's funny is Atlantic City has the Hard Rock, which has it's own arena named after Trump's late friend/business partner Mark G. Etess. Compared to the ancient stuff on the boardwalk, it looks brand new even though it's been around since the early 90s. Matter of fact, it was an added part of the old Trump Taj Mahal so it would be the OTHER venue still technically around. I know WWE did a house show post COVID there. I dunno why AEW chose the more spacious Boardwalk Hall over that. I guess just to say they ran a legendary building? This also tells you about how different the economies are around the country cause you would have thought some of these arenas would have been demolished decades ago. For example, the city of Memphis just will not demolish the Mid South Coliseum and it hasn't been used in almost twenty years. The Pyramid was only built in 1991 and lasted for about 15 years before it stopped being used in favor of the FedExForum where the Grizzlies play.

John Tenta was only like 37 or 38 in 2001, which would place him in the middle of the pack in terms of age on any today's non NXT wrestling rosters. That means he was in still in his late 20s/early 30s when he left WWF the first time.

So yeah, the actual venue is what was before and is now still called (Jim Whelan) Boardwalk Hall. It just doubled as the convention center for Atlantic City, which is kinda weird but whatever. Current unified welterweight champ Jaron "Boots" Ennis just fought there last month so it's still around. In four years, it would be 100 years old. I think it would probably be the 2nd oldest venue still actively hosting live events because there have been like at least 3 or 4 different iterations of Madison Square Garden. I think the oldest would be a stone's throw away in the Asbury Park Convention Hall, which is itself a century old. Both have hosted major wrestling events. The rest of the stuff Trump put his name on has all been since torn down. Matter of fact, I am pretty sure after that last Mania a couple years later, Trump was in dire financial straits. That pretty much meant that Atlantic City was in trouble too. That was when Atlantic City cause of those financial difficulties started to cede some of the major boxing events to Las Vegas. I think the last super huge megaevent in that era for Atlantic City was Holyfield vs. Foreman, which itself had a crazy story behind it. Trump was basically at risk of losing that fight and had that happened, it would have sunk him further (wouldn't want to see that happen, would we?). That fight was a license to print money even though it seemed farcical on paper at that point that Holyfield was fighting George Foreman. Here is a reporter's fact sheet from the official program he posted from when he covered the fight in 1991: Two things here: 1. It warms my heart to see Archie Moore's name when he (a) fought long enough that the beginning of his career was in the Great Depression and the end of his career coincided with the last year/months of JFK's time in office and life and (b) was born in the tee tiny county right next to the county where I was born in Mississippi. 2. Paying $100 for the nosebleeds in 1991 is insane. The next best seats being priced at $200 in 1991 is even more insane. Just stay at home and watch on TV.

Was this when Continental was really struggling to sell tickets? This absolutely sounds like one of those "shit, what's the worst that could happen? We actually draw fans?" ideas.

Well, I think it may be a cause and effect thing. The announcement IIRC saying there was a ban came immediately right after a taping, which the match posted above was taped. In the announcement, it specifically called out this match was the last time that blading/intentional blood would be permitted. Then, they walked it back. I think perhaps the performers involved apologized for going overboard and said they would dial back the heavy juice. That said, if you have limited performers, what else are going to do to make their matches somewhat interesting?

Turns out they didn't ban blading, but just want less of it.

To be fair, when business was down, Vince did ask Kevin Nash if he could fight fresh out of prison Mike Tyson.

Hulk Hogan is going to be in the ear of Mount Everest saying it needs to get Darby Allin to do a job in return.

When you think about it, pro wrestling is probably one of the few decent paying entertainment endeavors where there is any sort of gender equality, at least in terms of focus and spotlight. More importantly for this discussion, as pro wrestling is still based on aesthetics and the fact that these entertainers of any gender are playing real life superhero avatars, the resulting interactions between performers or performers and fans probably leave a lot to be desired. People talk about kayfabe being dead, but as you can clearly see, people still believe these performers are stars of some renown. Otherwise, you wouldn't bother them in this type of fashion. Infamous Japanese joshi freelancer Unagi Sayaka did a segment relatively recently where she interviewed a few people (IIRC Risa Sera, Chi Chi of Pro-Wrestling Evolution, and longtime puro ref Barb Sasaki) about the relationships between men and women in Japanese pro wrestling. It was interesting look because I don't ever remember anyone actually delving into intimate relationships like that in terms of Japanese wrestling. However, because you have less segregation now and you got Taka Michinoku and Kohei Suwama and Shuji Ishikawa having cards frequently with both men and women, it's probably more relevant than ever. Basically, unless something was lost in translation, you have some of the same issues you have on this side of the world. The point being is I dunno if there is going to be truly a safe space for performers, especially female performers.

Michael Morales and father time just beat the shit out of Durinho.

Yeah, the dead giveaway is Ben Peacock is much smaller height wise than Jim Harris and way more agile.

ECW is gonna have a lot of these cause they were an unofficial feeder promotion throughout much of their existence. Hell, Ron Simmons had a very good run with ECW for a little while and that's one people don't really mention. For what it is was, I would say Hakushi in WWF. He had the equivalent of a typical territory run: Got a solid push as a heel w/ a manager, had some decent to very good matches and only lost really to the stars, turned babyface out of the blue, and closed by doing the jobs he needed to do on the way out. He didn't overstay his welcome, and he fulfilled his duties as a guy in the middle of the card.

Big news haul with lots of implications:

It's on Amazon so I doubt it. If you remember, when WWE brought back SNME the 2nd time in 2006, NBC brought back American Gladiators a couple years later with Laila Ali and Hulk Hogan. That was when they had like Justice Smith, Mike O'Hearn, Gina Carano, Erin Toughill, and Matt Morgan as gladiators. Both ended up getting cancelled the same year. If they didn't do a tie in then, I doubt it's happening now.

I would say all of this has become more subjective in the social media age or within the last 10-15 years. Instead of campaigns probably being spearheaded by studios or critics or combination of both, you're getting real time feedback that may be largely influenced by a variety of entities. If you're a lower level critic or critic adjacent, you can really go to town on a film that you just thoroughly dislike or bombard people with negativity that (1) people now no longer plan to see a film or (2) already have an implanted bias against the film before they even see a frame of it. The same goes for films where certain people feel they have to be nominated for awards in numerous categories, thus creating a more favorable atmosphere for those films to do well. So when it does come awards time, you have certain camps and factions built up over the last several months who are invested in those films being recognized or being left out. This goes whether or not they've seen plenty of films released during the period of eligibility or did any type of due diligence. Moreover, in a strong year for film, everything that isn't nominated is somehow an intentional snub. That's why I bring up staying power. The context I am using it in is people going back and actually viewing those films regardless of the merits that may have been gained or lost out on. Can you objectively say you feel the same about a film or feel better/worse about a film once the theatrical run has ended or after the notoriety has slowed down or after people have gotten out all their initial opinions/reactions? I mean after the awards have already been given out, it's pretty much inconsequential and a lot of people have moved on. However, that's very intriguing to me in this day and age where more people have an opinion.

If you lost to Ariel Helwani, you would retire too.