Cyanide

Sure, I get that. I'm just saying it's not like she came out rocking the silver and blue and spiked a ball in Ricochet's face.

I had kind of lost track of who was who for AOP from my vantage point, but this is a much better explanation if that's how it shook out than the pure lucky break I thought it was. Not that this wasn't a legitimate way to go, but I can say that the crowd immediately sniffed out this finish getting teased and instantly turned on it. Much prefer how they managed to keep Shayna strong and give Moon a legit win for her reign, at the very least in keeping things from getting ugly. Sidebar on the crowd and this bout: Philly fans booing Ember Moon for being announced as from Dallas is a level of tribalism I hope to never understand. Dumb. Yeah, that shit was the worst. Fuck off with the armchair "in my day Cole would've needed two pints after!" false nostalgia. It's 2018; it's NXT/WWE; you know they're not just gonna let someone bleed like that through to the finish. And to the medical staff's credit they got things under control super fast, and there's no reason it shouldn't have been a complete non-issue.

Taped stuff: Agree that cheap heels O'Reilly and Fish being able to hang with AOP felt off, and the "we are being completely routed but one guy comes up gimpy and now we're back in it" shtick really seemed a bit too cutesy here. Otherwise good opener, though. Dream/Ohno was some wonderful character work, with the crowd being all the way in on Dream. Him pulling off the knockdown to beat the impromptu audience countdown was outstanding. Definitely sloppy with some ugly blown spots, but did what it needed to. Loved the women's bout - second favorite match of the night. Shayna came out still looking like a monster, but one that can be thwarted with some veteran savvy in a wrestling ring. Instantly thought of Lesnar getting caught by Mir in his UFC debut. She's dangerous even while still learning the ropes, and will only get better. I'm not a fan of the street fight that feels like it's just plodding from one spot to another, but Black and Cole pulled out enough legitimately cool stuff to make it work. Can't overstate how much the air was sucked out of the room when Sanity rolled in when everyone seemed primed for War Machine to show up to even the odds, or AOP to get their standing tall moment. The main... holy shit. This thing felt like a MOAT contender live. I'll have to rewatch, but absurdly hot throughout, and both Gargano and Almas felt like they got made here. Insane stuff from both men, impeccably paced and built, Zelina finally getting neutralized by Candice was great, and completely managed to avoid getting overshadowed by the specter of Ciampa. Awesome, awesome bout. My body is beyond ready for Almas/Black now.

I can't speak to anything from the past year post-Tiger Mask W, but Ibushi tangling with bigger, stronger, harder-hitting heavyweights from 2013-2015 is one of my favorite runs of work ever. Both the Nakamura matches (WK9 and the 2013 G1 Climax), vs MiSu in the 2013 G1, his NEVER bout with Ishii, the title shot vs Styles. Double-checking profightdb for dates, there's a 2015 NJ Cup bout with Naito and a singles contest with Okada in 2014 that I only kind of remember, but are also probably great. Basically every match is: Ibushi taking a beating and bumping around in his true Gumby fashion; working his feisty comebacks before being shut down time and time again; getting his spots in (including that monster desperation lariat he can never follow up on); and then dying en route to the finish. But it is essentially everything I ask for from pro wrestling.

I dig the design, but Matt's mug looks like Fale in a wig there.

I've barely been following NJPW, but this is a bad ass White/Omega feud tee design:

I am all the way in on every match on this card. This is the first "major" PPV/etc event I'll have gone to and I'm embarrassingly stoked.

Keith Lee vs Tracy Williams in a No Holds Barred match in Joppa for Evolve 101 (February 18th) has me like

"Roman is actually a part-timer" in 3... 2... Also, I'm willing to give him a pass if he's trying to get jacked enough to ditch the vest.

I saw a bunch of people invoke MiSu before watching this week's episode and was skeptical, but god damn. Please Baszler, don't hurt em. With the current state of the NXT women's division, I'm all about Shayna destroying Ember Moon and going to war with Kairi for the next 6-9 months now.

My read may be way off but I loved the UK title bout as Gallagher - full-time day job corporate motherfucker - coming back to the old neighborhood and proving he could still hang with the baddest guy in the yard, all the Gentleman Jack/umbrella business be damned. Which made for a pretty compelling story when paired with the in-ring work, even if it was only in my head. Banks/Ospreay was great and super emotionally charged and did seem to give the crowd basically everything they were looking for, so agree that was a hell of an act to follow. Also, a long show with a LOT of stuff going on, so fatigue and sensory overload and all that were probably in play as well.

Insane match. The magic of tape delay gives Pete Dunne two legit MOTYCs in like a week and a half. Gallagher looked like an absolute stud, and there's no way Dunne isn't at least knocking on the door of top 5-10 in the world right now.

Heads up for anyone going to Takeover at the end of the month - Hotels.com just notified me that the Holiday Inn Philadelphia Stadium is closing (?!?) so my reservation got cancelled. Got a room at the next closest hotel to the arena for a $140 premium... Imagine everything else nearby will be going fast and/or getting marked up to high heaven.

This comparison seems flawed because: 1) both Nakamura and the golden boy were repping Chaos, so there was story there keeping Nakamura out of the title scene; and 2) Nakamura was aware of how much of a goddamn rockstar he was, and chose to elevate a whole other belt/title scene around his center of gravity, rather than chase someone else. So the first conceit is off the table, and the second (which would just be treading old ground anyway) is undercut by the fact, as mentioned, Naito hates the idea of being a second-tier champ rather than the alpha dog. So watch him fuck around EVIL for LIJ SUPREMACY~ and then get another two-show reign six months after it feels right or something.

I was right there with you on the London/Velocity train. Grabbing something I wrote a while back: He was like a bolt of lightning coming into WWE at the time. I actually remember his arrival there as my initial entry point to the indies, with a bunch of IWC threads talking about this big pick-up from ROH (whatever that was) and elsewhere, and then seeing someone (and, later, an entire scene of guys and product) completely unlike what was usually featured on Monday and Thursday nights.

It's a two week delay from what I've seen reported, which is still less than ideal, but much better than two months. I get that as an indie outfit they're trying to figure out how to split the difference between the iPPV money and the Network/NJPW World type streaming, so that makes the whole package more palatable to me (curious about the points/rewards system for tickets/merch/etc though). But when you look at it as compared to Progress or something, it is definitely a bit of a let down.

No worries, my friend. We'll catch each other someday. Alongside all the absences of people working the Florida loop, injured, or in call-up limbo, I was also bummed about no Kairi, Gargano, Dream, and especially Aleister Black. But they put on a really tremendous show with everybody on hand. Seeing all three titles defended was a nice surprise, and every match was good to great on its own merit or moved an angle forward. Co-sign with Nick on the main, the Street Profits are insanely fun live, and Ruby and Sonya have excellent chemistry at this point - I'd love to see them blossom into some sort of Bayley/Sasha dynamic as their paths invariably cross again on the main roster.

I've been on a wrestling sabbatical the last few months, but too much good free shit on Youtube and unfettered access to all things NXT via my girlfriend's Hulu account has slowly dragged me back in. I'll be at the Bel Air show tomorrow night - if anyone spots a red-headed twentysomething in a white Aleister Black shirt, say what's up and we'll do LIJ poses. Also I just got a monster raise at work which I used to justify buying a ticket for the Philly Takeover, so excited for how this taping cycle continues to develop.

I beat the game and wrapped the epilogue yesterday. Nothing left but a bunch of scavenger hunt tasks I may never get to, I believe. Agreed in loving the premise of the final mission. Also (minor spoilers): I did honestly feel like I was just pushing through towards the end there; once I hit level 61 and felt the wrath of the tier VIII glitch, the wind was pretty much out of my sails. There's still a lot of good "Mass Effect"-ness to be had, but the thing is so riddled with basic, incomprehensible bugs and ill-conceived systems it is very disheartening overall. Also, throughout my playthrough, I couldn't help but think about how much the game leaned on tropes exhausted by the first trilogy; I honestly had it in the back of my mind that at some point things could go full MGS2 and Ryder would be revealed as just a pawn in a Commander Shepard Simulator program. On the bright side, I keep reminding myself how much of a flawed, beautiful mess ME1 was, and the strong possibility that the inevitable sequel will be paired down, streamlined, and fleshed out in the style of ME2. Also, with how responsive Bioware was with the ME3 Extended Cut (and even the first major patch for this title), I'm also hopeful that Andromeda will be a very different, overall better experience in the next few months to a year, and will reward another playthrough down the line.

I'll admit I'm probably unfairly maligning what I do think is a very good story on its own merits there because of my basic distaste for a flashback conceit dominating Book IV of a series (and likewise crediting Book V too much as a return to forward progress for the narrative) when I just wanted to get to the damn Tower.

Man, I plowed through the core seven books in a short span a few years back and you hit all my main gripes. I'm not as down on King in general as many are (read a lot of his stuff when I was younger, loved The Dead Zone and the uncut The Stand was a summer ritual read, ambivalent now for the most part but dug Full Dark, No Stars), but the depths of self-insertion that series ended up slogging to was borderline unforgivable. It was just about literally diminishing returns with every book for me (though I'd probably but Wolves of the Calla over Wizard and Glass). I think the ending would fit for a one-off parable on the consequences of mindless obsession, but I could not imagine the feeling of being invested in the story for more than two decades and getting that as your reward. Woof.

All of this is stuff I've still been working through the last few days. (Also, sidebar: if the surgery is still thought to be a work in some parts, how far through the looking glass are we if a life-threatening injury requiring emergency brain surgery is considered a good angle to put over a contest?) I tried to put together all the things that have been running through my head, but it came out as a long, rambling diatribe that felt way too dramatic. The key points, however: 1) Going back to the WCW cruisers and the original Super J-Cups and M-Pro in the mid-90s, I've basically always liked an athletic style of wrestling that is inherently dangerous and has the body count to show for it, while in recent years I've boycotted football and MMA for years over long-term participant health and well-being in an era of concussion and head injury awareness (among other reasons). 2) Obviously arenas like NJPW (the whole reason we're talking about this, as perhaps the zenith of what the art has been trending towards for decades in Japan) and the US/UK indies (where workers have the most pressure to get themselves over and the least degree of a safety net when it comes to the risks they take) are a problem here. But, fuck, how many clips of people almost getting seriously hurt were there from Monday's Raw? In, while increasingly influenced by the influx of puroresu and indy icons, the most prominent, commercialized, safety-emphasizing promotion in the business. (Which is also run by a ideologically repugnant and creatively bereft braintrust, relies on squeezing money from a schedule designed to ensure everyone breaks down eventually, and is rapidly reasserting a monopoly on the business. Just to sweeten the pot.) 3) If these are issues I care about, how can I keep squaring the circle? Aside from just accepting that, as a human being, I have a limitless capacity for hypocrisy and self-deception and rationalization. This is something I've gone back and forth on as a wrestling fan for a long time. My last departure from day-to-day enjoyment of the medium came after a four-year period where (along with life stuff taking over) my second favorite wrestler's heart exploded at 38, my favorite murdered his family, and another top-fiver died in the ring. After that it was years of on-again, off-again fandom before really jumping back into things over the last two years (and especially over the last year after breaking my ankle in three places while skateboarding, so I'm not of the mentality that people should only confine themselves to activities which can be completed within the safety and comfort of an impervious field of bubble-wrap). It's beyond naive to think pro wrestling is never not going to be scummy and exploitative (of the health and well-being of talent, and otherwise) to some degree, but with the genie being out of the bottle on where the state of the art is today, is there any sort of outlet or movement that can create a happy medium at this point, or will I just be riding the line of cognitive dissonance until I get out of the game for good?

Loved the tag match. Tencozy did exactly what they had to do and then some, and War Machine continue to look great. I like Rowe and the team, but Hanson is a special talent. Surprised he's not the one the WWE is clamoring for, other than having already been in and out of the system. If you took the under on the 0.5 defenses, congratulations! Hated the opening to the NEVER bout, with Goto going along with ZSJ's opening shtick while looking like he could deadlift him and throw him through the mat at any time. But ZSJ settled into his probing, ripping, tearing mode, which makes him look infinitely better than when he's going for tests of strength and the standard matwork exhibition bullshit, and then it was pretty cathartic when Goto did actually deadlift him en route to the finish. Could have done without the Suzuki-gun run-in, but the heel stable stuff is what it is at this point, and sets us up nice for Goto/Suzuki. Holy shit at the junior title match. Never would have thought we'd see Hiromu effectively squashing KUSHIDA. My first thought was things were getting cut short after KUSHIDA took that ugly snap bump to the floor on the diving sunset flip powerbomb, but he probably wouldn't have been blasted with Hiromu's repertoire if so. (Except, you know. Japan.) The Ricochet match should be excellent. I fucking loved the main event. Fantastic pro wrestling. Will absolutely be one of my favorite matches of the year. And then the finish came. Okada is a wonderful talent, but the booking is making everyone else look ridiculous with him increasingly looking totally outclassed by his challengers, but always being able to finisher spam his way out. There were so many great moments in this thing though. Shibata twice working his way to full mount in the opening exchange and taunting Okada as if to say there's nothing you can do that I won't let happen. Okada going full heel on his clean break spot and refusing to break a hold later on, and the crowd COMPLETELY turning on him in kind, and then COMPLETELY getting behind Shibata on his countering exchanges. Shibata staying on his feet for the first flash Rainmaker. More so than the Omega bout, more so than getting thoroughly worked over by Suzuki for like 40 minutes, EVERYTHING in this match pointed to Shibata outclassing Okada in every phase of the game as an IWGP Heavyweight champ, except the outcome. Really deflating result. But at least we get to see Okada beat Fale again now because ??????????? I've been beating the drum for a while on how ugly and unnecessary Shibata's unwavering commitment to absurd stiffness continues to be, so I echo the sentiments of everyone else here. At the very least that hardway headbutt needs to be gone forever.

I've always thought the last chapter of The Getaway where El Rey is introduced and described is one of the best one-off pieces of world-building I've ever encountered in fiction. Thompson's body of work is amazing, but that will always be what sticks with me for him. Totally engrossing and unsettling for what's essentially an epilogue.

Just watched the trios title match. Good, fun, well-paced bout, but nothing blowaway. Warning for those going through NJPW World - the result is effectively spoiled by one of the post-match thumbnails on the main page.