Fighting a man with a perm

Well I'm wrecked after that, but the good kind of wrecked. 7 hours including the pre-show is a lot, so I tapped out midway during Omega-Okada but watched the remainder this morning. Was oscillating all night about the result of Texas Death. "It's going on last" - hangman wins. "MJF wins the gauntlet" - hangman wins. "Swerve wins" - oh, maybe Mox wins. "That's a lot of face wins" - shit, Mox is winning! Great work with layout and placement of the show building to the finale. Texas Death was brutal, and both men looked like colossuses(colossi?) out there. Whatever about the storyline, Mox exudes authenticity in his violence in a way that's distinct from his peers. I just love Adam Page like I love Hector Bellerin, I'm fully bought into his story. Juice! What have you done to yourself? Grow that beard back ASAP and ditch the goth Daddy Magic vibes. MJF was the sensible choice and look forward to him haunting Hanger now. Women's gauntlet was a mess in terms of the amount of outside interference but that only added to it's charm. I was on the Willow train but Athena deserves the opportunity. Omega-Okada was....fine....for some reason Okada often leaves me cold. Not doubting his ability or anything, just a personal taste thing. Mone had the best entrance of the night, hands down! Great match, surprising outcome. My one small gripe - at big shows like this, AEW have lots of nice ideas (the whistler for Hangman, Ain't nobody for Swerve, the video for Toni Storm, the Darby Everest video) but the execution often let's them down. I think with entrances, if you add something new beforehand, you can't have a big silent gap before just going into the usual entrance theme and that happened too often. With Darby, it's understandable due to location, but the sound quality on that video was not good. Anyway, just a minor thing I'd love to see them really nail in future. Now to get ready to cheer on Meath to All Ireland glory, Hon the Royals!

One positive from the limo bit was Nick's, "how will we financially recover from this?!?". Otherwise, in full agreement - great show in terms of whetting the appetite for the weekend. The tag match was my personal highlight, Bandido put on a hell of a display and I'm always gonna be happy to see Brody. Roll on Saturday, I'm pumped for an 8pm kick off. I have bottles of Kinnegar Scraggy Bay in the fridge (the greatest of all IPAs) and will probably order in some BBQ to fit in with the Texas thing.

Have seen knockoff Bullet Club/Pink Pony Club mashup t-shirts, and it's the closest I've come to buying a wrestling adjacent t-shirt.

This is incredible! Loved the female security guard shouting, "ooh mr muscles! Mr muscle man!" after him.

In one of the earlier Collision appearances after the FTR turn (3/4 weeks ago), Schiavone definitely used the word "pinnacle" to describe how terrible FTR were.

I don't think you will be. I feel we're building towards Hangman defeating Mox, with Swerve coming to Page's aid to combat Death Riders to end the beef between himself and Hanger.

Cheers, so brave new world was the start of that story? Because it was just dropped into that conversation with Sam so casually that I assumed I'd missed something.

Saw this yesterday, good times! Definitely a step in the right direction for the MCU which had become quite stale lately. Pugh steals the show, she exudes charm as Yelena but still does enough to let the facade slip and show moments of vulnerability. David Harbour also chomped on every single piece of scenery as Alexei, and was a treat every time he was on screen. The movie has its flaws (the primary Valentina story took a bit of a back seat towards the end) and some of the darker beats in the final act were simply wiped clean, but I was nonetheless entertained throughout. Plus, one of the first, "oh shit" post credit scenes in a long time. I'd only watched Brave New World this week, and maybe I missed something, but when did Bucky get into politics? That came out of left field for me.

I can't wait to see how Neville and Carragher defend this decision. With all the headlines the David Coote story got, it's mad that no journalist thought to look into the biases (unconscious or otherwise) of more referees. It was just waved off as "one bad apple". Oliver referees Arsenal differently to other teams, even in the same game - Lewis Skelly gets a red for "above the ankle" contact, Joao Gomes gets a yellow for a considerably more aggressive tackle equally high. Anyway, was at the Zagreb game midweek, the lads looked tired then, and even more so today. If we can somehow get to our Dubai break without dropping further behind Liverpool, we have some chance. But, maybe a little crumb of help in the transfer market please, Mr Kroenke???

I read everything from "dismantle" to the tune of "Nightman" from Always Sunny. Hanger as Dayman, Mox as Nightman, PAC as the toll troll, Yuta as the boy. It all works!!

Just......violence! I really hope this is the start of a Brody King mega push! The new presentation of the three HONB (hat tip @Ramo2653 for the name suggestion) is great, less spooky, more hardcore! Actually didn't hate the ending beatdown, Yuta is becoming an all time great little shit! Harley Cameron has some serious charisma, and I'm not just talking about her ti.......pping point! Would love to see her get the banana peel win in Brisbane. I'm not in love with the Hurt Syndicate but that title change was needed, hopefully we see a better focus on tags again now. Good show overall, enjoyed the first signs of a potential hanger face turn. Osprey referencing why he's not involved in the title scene was clever.

So I'm on a bit of a high after last night's North London Derby (come on you gunners!) and I think something from that match highlights why I'm not loving AEW at the moment. Seeing 18 year old Myles Lewis Smelly have a coming of age moment, and whipping the crowd into a frenzy as he left the pitch is exciting. I like to see potential being realised. There's just too many acts that are my age or older in AEW at the moment - Jericho, Jarrett, Cope, Christian, Hurt Syndicate etc. we've seen these guys ceilings and they're never reaching them again so there's no "what could be" there, only "what once was". Where is the next wave of young talent in AEW? They're still talking about Darby, MJF, Garcia as young up and corners despite them having 5 years under their belts. It's literally just Fletcher and Takeshita, but they're dragged into the Callis mire. Anyway, anyone else spot the sequinned cock and balls on the back of Megan Wayne's robe???

For the record, it's Longford, Longford is the most depressing part of Ireland.

I'm sure all the foreign accents are equally bad, but man alive did I cringe hard and often when the "Dublin Thunder" were speaking. Britt baker cameo - couldn't tell if she was overdubbed or that was her own atrocious russian accent. This show should be awful, but it's somehow not. So many differing strands all coming together nicely in the final episode.

Going into this week, I really hated the "first to 3 wins faces MJF" stop because why wouldn't Cole and Roddy be fighting over card placement? Then when the Falls Count Anywhere match started I thought, ooh, this is interesting - have both guys brawl all over the stadium/town, let the show go on as normal catching up from time to time, then when Cole's match starts you can have some split screen jeopardy and that's how you maybe outsmart Max and get to the 3 way. Then 2 mins into Strong-Archer, Excalibur casually mentions that if both men win tonight it's a 3 way - blah!!!