Cyanide

This made me look up ROH events for the first time in forever and Best In The World is at UMBC at the end of June. Which is pretty tempting, but... ^^^^^^^^ Boy there hasn't been an ROH card that really interested me that wasn't buoyed by heavy international involvement in a long, long time.

save_us.adbd

Seriously, punt all the McMahon shit into the sun tonight and have Bryan roll up on Raw and wear Miz the fuck out. Also now all I want is Bryan vs Dunne (or Almas, or Black, or Bate, or Ciampa...)

Billie Kay rebranded as Paige confirmed.

Final four: Jinder, Tian Bing, Mustafa Ali... and Roman Reigns. Reigns goes out, and then Ali. Jinder and Bing are eliminated simultaneously. Sets up a showdown in a one million seat floating stadium suspended over Tibet. Winner crowned WWE Pan-Asiatic Champion and feuds with Khali for the next year.

https://twitter.com/SexyChuckieT/status/968675856330747909?s=20 Embed not working for me: Chuck Taylor @SexyChuckieT SECRET TO WRESTLING SUCCESS Do the same bullshit for 16 years and eventually everyone will get signed to WWF and other promotions will have no choice but to use you

When I was at the NXT Bel Air show back in December there was a kid in a pot leaf hoodie and a hat with WEED emblazoned on it. So he's probably pumped right now.

Ishii is way the hell up there. I don't know if the older guys would wanna take the beating, but Suzuki and even a surly-ass-G1-mode Nagata would be great too. Marufuji bringing his junior death chops and then bumping like a psycho would be great too. Add Ibushi for that reason, too. And Nakajima. Going all in on dream matches: from WWE (among those I don't think have had a real bout with), sign me up for Cesaro, Joe, Sheamus, Harper, Nakamura, and Ciampa. Styles too on general principle, and I'd say Reigns... but he's gotta ditch the chest protector.

Finished up Chapter 63 today. My god, the crimes committed by WALTER against Mark Davis' chest. If the Ring General showed up in New Japan and killed Okada in eight minutes I wouldn't bat an eye. Bate vs ZSJ and Dunne/Seven vs Riddle/David Starr are also insanely hot. Definitely recommend.

Needs an obligatory exit interview: "In your time with the organization, is there anything that hindered you, or you think should be improved moving forward?" "Well, I, individually, thought I was performing to the best of my ability, but I felt management lent a deaf ear to how my productivity and success ultimately suffered from a co-worker repeatedly blasting me a crutch..." "Sure, we hear that a lot."

Stunner. Wonder if he pops in ROH now, or just floats around at the David Starr-tier for a while.

That's truly abhorrent behavior in any case... but there's a special circle in hell for anyone who would heckle Kairi.

Huh! I haven't checked any of their shows out (literally remembered they were the ones with the Amazon hook-up while writing my initial post), but boy that sounds awful.

Anyone able to pimp some non-Killshot Shane Strickland? He's a guy that's been a bit of a blind spot for me outside of LU that I've been thinking about lately - and not not because of this dope tee design: I already have his Progress bouts to get to in the backlog, and I have access to the AAW and Defy (I got a match vs Lio Rush in my Youtube watch later list from there already) catalogs through Demand Progress, and PCW through Amazon Prime.

Holy shit, that sounds like an amazing gig, haha. Definitely jealous as well. I've never been one for meet and greets but after seeing him speak I regretted not taking the chance. Literally an ear to ear smile while hanging on his every word. Such a disarming and sweet presence in a business known for blowhards and clowns. He battled with his own demons, but on the whole he's basically everything I want from wrestling, inside the ring and out.

I generally think the WorkHorsemen are a fine enough team, if pretty unexceptional. Definitely agree that Henry has more than a little Davey Richards gene in him. The last Evolve show I went to opened with him vs Matt Riddle, and it turned into a full-blown NOAH-style overkill/Northern Lights Bombs for nothing near-falls affair. Actually, I've been catching up on a lot of recent Progress the last few months, and it's hard not to compare them as a team (to their detriment) to Aussie Open as a contemporary indy pairing with a similar size disparity and style. On that note, I think James Drake could definitely use some more Mark Davis in his game when it comes to balancing the cutesy athletic big man stuff with some good solid size and power work. (Sidebar: I can't wait for Chapter 63 to hit. I dig Aussie Open a lot, but from the first chop I saw Mark Davis land, I needed an Atlas division bout with him and WALTER in my life. I am so ready.) On the Darby front, I think a lot of indy promos are undercut by just generally shitty, snarky crowd reactions and one-sided call-and-response, but he really does have an insanely magnetic presence as a face. He's a dude who you completely buy as the lifelong runt and loner and outcast who is putting everything on the line to prove himself and show he can hang with the kind of people who would have never given him a second thought. To me that's so much more compelling than just having him be a self-destructive weirdo. Co-sign on Theory's (dammit) evolution as well. Like Darby, he's a guy I like so much more than the last time I saw him, when he was a super vanilla athletic prospect who nearly killed himself on a guardrail on a springboard moonsault. So much better as the anti-Tyler Bate. Postscript on streaming services: I did a free month of WWN Club when it launched and signed up for Demand Progress near the end of last year; caught up on some Evolve shows with the former for a bit, but in general Progress' service, presentation, venues, roster, aesthetic, crowds, ethos, and just about everything are so much better to me for a very similar overall product that (time and money being finite) I ditched WWN before it ever re-upped. I'll probably be back here and there to catch up on the good stuff (like you said, WALTER vs Darby at Evolve 103 should be bananas), but overall I find the UK indies are smoking the US right now.

Evolve 101 live thoughts: Fan of the prelim matches. Quick, competent work from just about everybody involved, and like the format as a showcase for guys who aren't doing anything else or can come back or move up down the line. Opening tag match kind of got away from me. This sounds like a dumb quibble as I think through it, but The End's music kept going for what felt like the first third of the match, which is a minor technical screw-up but was really weird and disorienting live (disclaimer: I'm currently half-deaf in one ear from an upper respiratory virus, so YMMV) and everything after just felt like a brawl stretched out into a slapdash match. Yehi/Mercer I dug. Fred Yehi is still the best and now he's out here throwing snap half-nelson whips. First time seeing Mercer and I liked what he brought to the table. ZSJ/Dickinson was great. Dickinson continues to straddle that line between being a convincing big, dumb, violent lug and an actual big, dumb, violent lug. Sabre is maybe pound-for-pound the best wrestler in the world in making every match feel like a fight for every blow and every hold. Keith/Tracy no holds barred was actually a bit of a bummer. Keith Lee was awesome as always, but Hot Sauce was basically made to look like a geek, getting pasted with power shots over and over, and only really able to get any offense off cheap shots to the knee, outside interference, and chair and ladder attacks. Just kind of a plodding and sloppy bout in general I don't think I've seen any of their one-on-one matches previously; curious how they match-up in a more standard affair. Really liked the four-way elimination main event. Riddle was amazing as always. Jaka is still great. You can keep Johnny Gargano; Darby Allin has come on from basically just being a one-note heel the last time I saw him live to a complete wrestler and maybe my favorite never-say-die underdog babyface in the business going into 2018. Even Austin Theory was very sharp here and looks like he's really thriving in his cocky Evolution/Next Big Thing gimmick under Priscilla Kelly.

Horrifying: https://www.prowrestlingtees.com/babyface Minimized samples:

It's a shitty thing to guess at... but boy it sure is hard not to take the leap to wellness. That Kuato thing in his gut sure has never looked natural.

Just finished Progress Chapter 62. Brutal, brutal main event. When he gets going, there's no human being on the planet that I buy going over WALTER. This also made me regret that we'll never have a WALTER vs Morishima match-up where both men paste each other until it looks like a Cronenberg scene.

1. MGS2 - ~17 years later, still my high water mark for what can be accomplished in a video game, and still my go to answer for my favorite video game of all time. 2. MGS4 - 10 years on, still a technical marvel and ingenious piece of game design and raw storytelling. Yes, the cutscenes are obnoxious, but the total package is such a loving tribute to everything that kept people so invested in the series for so long. Also, Act 4 gave me perhaps the most feels ever in a video game. 3. MGS1 - an unparalleled piece of narrative and world-building that I feel hasn't aged well mechanically after everything that came after it. And I know that's a shitty take, but it's really hard for me to not take the jump from 1 to 2 and not think, "oh, THIS is what Kojima was trying to pull off on 32-bit hardware." 4. MGS3 - a great game that only falls to fourth on the strength of the above. 5. Peace Walker - a good enough part of the Big Boss narrative with some cool geopolitical wrinkles. Mostly here because... 6. MGSV - one of the most polished technical achievements in video game history, but an absolute dogshit component of the MGS mythos. Hated almost everything about it with regard to narrative - an unfinished mess with shitty grimdark takes on existing characters, half-assed introduction and immediate invalidation of new characters, and a final jump off a cliff that makes the story seem like a cruel joke (and this from a person who unabashedly loves MGS2!) * Rising - as a total mark for both MGS and Platinum, I LOVE Revengeance, but didn't feel right lumping it in with the Kojima works. A game with a tortured dev cycle that seemed destined to fail as a shunted off licensing opportunity (turns out, those would come later for Platinum...), it TOTALLY works as a fantastic take on Cyborg Ninja-side of Metal Gear.

Possibly cheating because it was also used by the early Hardys, but:

Woof. I feel like Shayna mugging alone should get them north of 3.

Ah, good pull. I blanked on him given his hiatus. I could see the cruisers too on a technicality, but I tend to see the CWC as NXT-adjacent with the Triple H project/Full Sail and Network production commonalities. And the fact they were working NXT house shows in the interim between the CWC and 205 Live.

I haven't drank deep of the Rumble threads yet, but would Rousey be the first to debut on the main roster since the Styles/Anderson/Gallows contingent?