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Never stop, @Flair’s Shadow. I will always support your unlikely and wildly overconfident predictions.

I agree. Right there you mentioned two things other than titles for wrestlers to be motivated by or feud over--money and prestige. For me the ideal is one title for each division being everyone's ultimate goal, with non-title feuds/rivalries over some combination of personal beefs and the prospect of advancement up the ladder toward the championsip. If a promotion finds itself in need of a midcard title, that tells me that they're not doing a good enough job conveying to the audience what the competitive hierarchy is and how individual matches and rivalries fit into it.

Regarding championships, I stand with Minoru Suzuki: I never liked the idea of secondary titles that are secondary just because. Even as a kid, I would think "what exactly does the WWF European championship have to do with Europe?" Also--and I realize this is easy for me to say when I've never had to book a wrestling promotion--I think it's a bad sign if you need to introduce new titles to have feuds that feel like they're going somewhere.

This is almost exactly what they did at Halloween Havoc '98, except there wasn't a long delay before the reversal. And Goldberg kicked out >:^| Booooo

What was up with that anyway? So weird.

First time watching Dynamite in a while. My favorite part of the show was watching Cash Wheeler on offense. I used to think of Dax as the clear standout in FTR but now I'm not so sure.

Just remembered another one I hate: when the name of a tag team is either (a) A portmanteu of the two wrestlers' names (FinnJuice, Breezango) (b) A phrase made up of a word associated with one wrestler + a word associated with the other wrestler. (Sky Pirates, Natural Nightmares, Broserweights, Dangerous Tekkers) This another part of the "cutesiness" trend I mentioned earlier--in that it seems like it's intended just to make fans say "oh, haha, I get that! I get what they're doing there!" Plus it makes the team seem more like just those two wrestlers thrown together, rather than a special thing with its own identity.

To make this analogy work, we'd have to imagine a version of GLOW that was founded by a bunch of star wrestlers from GAEA. In which case the criticism you're imagining doesn't seem quite as weird.

But seriously, folks: I'm kidding, but I'm also completely serious. (Spoiler for eyeroll-inducing diatribe)

I don't know quite how to explain this, but I hate this thing I've been seeing recently where multiple wrestlers will all do one wrestler's signature pose at the same time. It's part of a larger trend toward a sensibility in wrestling that I can't quite describe except to call it "cutesy". For example: Plus one more recent thing in a similar vein from AEW

Waiting patiently for Chaos Project to join CHAOS.

On commentary during WK night 1, Chris Charlton teased this TV announcement and then said something like "I love the color purple". I'm not sure what he meant by that, but if I had to guess, I'd say it's a hint that the show will be directed by Steven Spielberg.

And ramp pose and apron pose for their ring entrance.

This is interesting. I'd heard that NJPW recruits learn some legit fighting skills as part of their training, but I didn't know that was true of AJPW also. Not surprising, but cool to have it confirmed.

I think the idea is that Omega considers himself a great dramatic artist on par with someline like Olivier even though he clearly isn't. So the insult is not that Omega actually resembles Olivier in any way, but rather that Omega fancies himself that sort of figure when he's actually a ridiculous scenery-chewer. Kinda like calling an arrogant dumb guy "Einstein". (Not endorsing Cornette's opinion btw.)

I think most people who saw him in the Shield when they were heels would've at least guessed. I haven't paid close attention to WWE in a long time, but isn't this the kind of character people have been clamoring for Reigns to play for years and years?

I think he was saying that Cornette's podcasts are the wrestling equivalent of Red Scare, a somewhat controversial podcast in the world of Twitter-addicted media types.

Looks like a 1950s French catch Imanari roll:

Here's my problem with the delayed vertical suplex: once you've got your opponent up in that position, with that kind of control, why would you just drop back for a regular suplex? Why wouldn't you hit a brainbuster, or a jackhammer, or drop them on their face? This is why it drives me up the wall when Tomohiro Ishii does a delayed vertical suplex. His finisher is a brainbuster!

Jonathan Snowden right now:

Many of you are failing to consider that @Flair’s Shadow may have all his AEW predictions exactly right until Tony Khan reads them and changes everything.

I've long suspected that the head-drop escalation in '90s AJPW was driven by the wrestlers themselves. My theory is that a lot of pro wrestlers are masochistic thrill-seekers, who justify their self-inflicted brutality by claiming they're doing it for the fans, when really it's mainly for their own satisfaction. (But then fans do get acclimated to it, so it becomes a vicious cycle.)

I would very much like Tay Conti to start doing a Koji Iwamoto-style harai goshi. She's a judo black belt, she definitely knows how. It's a great move that somebody in U.S. wrestling should pick up IMO.

In a saner world, AEW would've held off on starting their women's division until they could build it around Hikaru Shida as the top face and Jamie Hayter as the top heel.