HumanChessgame

Kingston/Lethal was fine. I've never been much of a Jay Lethal fan but he does well in a JTTS role. Interested to see where Ortiz re-aligning himself with Eddie goes. Sometimes you can just tell two guys decided they'd just go out and lay into eachother and figure out how to make it look good as they went. Claudio and Matthews compliment eachother so well. They're both really physical wrestlers with Matthews being the faster of the two and Claudio is one of the better bases for guys like that. Give me a best of seven series between these guys. There wasn't anything wrong with the ROH tag title match but I thought The Gunns could have used the rub here. I get they're going for the uneasy champions pairing with Joe and MJF (assuming Joe is actually his partner and officially the champ?) but the Ass Boys would be a good fit as champs in ROH. I wasn't really a fan of MJF getting stretchered out as the whole "injured face comes back from the local medical facility all banged up and still manages to win" trope annoys me. Well, nobody turned on Sting Cassidy/Moxley was definitely a match between the two. Mark Briscoe is in the Not G8 and he's continental AF Shida's Jushin Liger gear was pretty cool. Toni managed to balance her comedy bits with a lot of overall good wrestling and the match was decent and marred by a really dumb finish. I don't mind Toni winning via shenanigans but the metal gimmick was just barely still in her tights and plainly visible during the bump. An AEW ppv has a ladder match because of course it does. I cringed when Black and Dralistico took piledrivers on ladders but other than that there wasn't as much absurdity as some of the other ladder matches have had. I'm here for Skye's new look. She always had such natural upbeat babyface energy I didn't think she'd work as a heel, but then again Julia Hart started off as a cheerleader. This was the best match of the night at this point. While I like Julia having a title, I really liked Stat as champ. Osprey being signed didn't really come off as that big a of a deal to me considering he's been there a few times before and clearly had some type of working agreement already. Damn, Swerve caught an absolute gusher in there. Most of the garbage matches in AEW have either been comical or just poorly executed and pale in comparison when you actually watch deathmatches regularly, but this actually delivered. The barbed wire spots actually looked painful and had some decent innovation (the arm trap SOS slam and moonsault). It was a bit odd not to see the face win after all the shit Swerve has done, but I'm fine with it as long as it leads to Swerve moving up the card. The cooler tag match went way too long, or at least seemed to with the four guys doing their usual shit-in-getting. The Young Bucks went full heel by the end which suits them better. MJF stole an ambulance and hobbled to the ring. Despite selling to the point he could barely walk throughtout the match, MJF and White still have a competitive bout. I get MJF is desperate and pulling out whatever he can to save his title and fight off the pain, but the multiple high spots and MJF more than holding his own for 20+ minutes made it hard to really get into. The longer this went on and more dog and pony show bits that kept going on (Cole teasing the towel, ref bump, belt shots, run ins, etc) put a damper on it for me. Jay White looked like a wuss because he couldn't beat a guy with one leg even when cheating and the match was overbooked to hell. I kept thinking that Cole was going to reveal he was faking his injury and he was The Devil all along, but no, no payoff to that storyline yet. Swerve/Page and the women's three way were my favorites of the night. Overall this was not one of their stronger PPVs.

GCW held a show in Wyoming in 2021 at a barn type structure at a fairgrounds. It featured Manders riding a horse to the ring only for the horse to refuse to walk out, Mance Warner doing a "pocket sand" spot, and someone in the audience calling the police because they thought the main event brawl was a shoot.

I assumed he was going to return last weekend, but then the only thing he did was pop up on one of RJ City's bits and say "Nope, not this week" or something like that. It makes me wonder if he's not cleared yet or what's going on, but the shows would certainly be better with him around.

Is Danielson's injury legit? I assumed it was just kayfabe, especially after the promo with all the gauze over his eye.

Has any company ever had a rule where you couldn't hold two titles simultaneously? One of my childhood e-feds had that rule, mainly because I used it as a angle to break up the tag champs when one of them won the world title.

MJF and Garcia had a nice little match. Toni Storm's silent movie bits have been more miss than hit for me, but her promo here with Shida was aces. I don't know who Mariah May is but her wiki makes it sound like she's pretty accomplished. So Julia's black mist isn't strong enough to corrupt Skye, even though she's still acting slightly heelish and wearing the makeup? I still think there's going to be some other twist to this program. NXT, TNA, and Smackdown all have equal if not less time in their main programs but get more women's matches featured while giving ample time for everything else. There's no excuse for only one women's match per show at this point. Surprised the Bollywood Boys got squashed like that. I hope they got an ROH match or something out of it as well. Joe/Lee was great but the ending stunk. Unless he succeeds in winning the world title Joe looks like an idiot for giving up the TV title and they easily could have had him lose via some sort of fuckery to further another storyline for him and give Lee some shine, but I guess they need to have yet another tournament for a new champ. Swerve/Penta and Briscoe/White were as good as expected. Adam, Roddy, and The Kingdom are the masked guys, right?

I don't disagree on Afterlife capitalizing on the Stranger Things vibe of precocious tweens getting involved in supernatural adventures (see also the It remake) but I still liked it a lot more than I expected to. This may veer into personal Hot Take territory, but I thought it provided the fan service nostalgia the new Star Wars trilogy tried to capture. I'm not sure what to think about the new movie just based on that brief trailer. It kind of reminds me of a plot of a Real Ghostbusters episode, but not something that would work as a full length movie.

I'm here for an Airwolf reboot, as long as they keep the banger of a theme song.

Swerve/Fox is always good and the way the match kicked off was a nice way to jump start the program. I would much rather have had some nice back and forth on the mic between Castle and The Acclaimed instead of that embarrassing bit they did beforehand. Some of the audience may think it's funny but it just reminded me of more of DX's lamer bullshit. Archer is AEW's Kane in that he's a big guy they can heat up when they need to get an underdog face over. This reminded me of CM Punk/Wardlow where Darby got murdered most of the match but found a way to sneak out a win. The way Darby always uses his body as cannon fodder trying to take out his opponent in the process worked really well here. Jay Briscoe is back being awesome and all is right.

When Wardlow jacked MJF up against the wall and said he took everything from him I was half expecting MJF to respond with "I don't even know who you are". The main event played out well enough but everything The Acclaimed have been doing the past few weeks has been ridiculously cringe. They started as a successful but comedic mid-card team and tried really hard to get over as a serious in-ring threat, but since dropping the titles and aligning with Billy they've just gotten especially silly. Max being a simp for MJF has been particularly lame. I get their scissoring bit is over but so much of their recent schtick is borderline 90s DX stuff. Speaking of attitude era nonsense, I don't know who thought it would be a good idea to have Big Show attempt to wrestle again. I guess if they want to rehash the idea of him being Andre's son then going full circle and having him stand on the apron while being basically immobile makes sense. Interesting to see where they Skye Blue angle goes. It's almost like the black mist corrupted her, but did not turn her into a HOB follower like it did with Julia.

Penta vs. Vikingo vs. Kommander has been added

I watched this last night and it's a total throwback to something you would have seen on Cinemax at 1 am in 1991. Whether that's good or bad is entirely up to what one's taste is.

A tag team partner that doesn't turn on him?

I was having a thought about guys with similar looks and gimmicks and wondered if Magnum TA and Rick Rude ever crossed paths, but cagematch says no. The world probably couldn't have handled that much mustache magnificence in the ring at the same time anyways.

I'm assuming the tension between Aldis and Pearce is being used to build up the obligatory Raw vs Smackdown Survivor Series match. Some sort of Judgement Day/Bloodline elimination match is more interesting but we'll see. The tag division is getting pretty interesting. Hopefully with Vince doing less creative we get more and longer matches between AA, New Day, DIY, the Raiders, etc.

I'm all in on a BCC/HOB feud. Black showing up out there to beat down Danielson was good enough, but them showing back up throughout the show to seemingly start a program with them and/or FTR. The only thing I didn't like was that the heels should have stood tall at the end to make us anticipate the faces trying to get their revenge, but I guess they needed to set up the bit with Moxley and Cassidy. I also thought it was kind of out of character for HOB to ally with Starks and Bill instead of taking them out as well. Speaking of Starks and Bill, they were really shining in the tag match. I'd always written Bill off as a stiff, but he's really put it together as of late. I like how no matter how hard Claudio and Yuta battled back, Bill was just too big and Starks was just too crafty for them. It's good to see Miro back, but I think he should have won quicker and more decisively. Eddie's promo in the back was the best part about that whole match and segment. Willow/Statlander was probably my favorite match of the night. Both of them looked great here, even if that avalanche DVD was a bit much to kick out of. I'm really glad it looks like they aren't turning Willow heel as well as everything about her just has natural face energy.

Octopus Black/Darkness Octopus upon his heel turn.

Various types of creepy verbal abuse, keeping them in cages or pits in the ground, dumping mud, sewage, paint, insects, and who knows what else on them and leaving it on them for long periods of time, waterboarding, various types of sensory deprivation, etc. It was almost like the guy fancied himself some horror movie villain. There was one scene in particular where a guy was bound and in a ditch and almost covered in mud and said he'd had enough and wanted to be done with it, but the guy kept telling him he wasn't done yet.

I saw Scanners at the local Alamo and realized how good the sound design is when there's theater surround sound involved. During the "scanning" scenes you can feel the harsh, atonal noise in your head. It's a documentary, but Monster Inside: America's Most Extreme Haunted House is about the most infamous "extreme" haunted house. I remember urban legends about these sorts of places way back when I was still in college, with rumors that they were so scary that you got your money back if you could make it through the whole thing. The place they profile isn't even a haunted house, but just an location where some guy just spends hours at a time torturing people after they sign a massive waiver. Several people who went it share their experiences, along with a few consultants weighing in on the legal aspects (very grey area due to consenting adults) of what was being done and psychological analysis of what happens to your brain along the way (it's considered pushing yourself much the same way engaging in extreme sports/heavy BDSM is). The guy behind it is, unsurprisingly, a sadistic carny who gets off on hurting people and ignoring consent. All the footage in there is actually real stuff that was taken during these peoples' sessions is pretty disturbing.

All parties involved should concern themselves with just trying to put on the most compelling shows possible and not act like it's 1999 again. Taking potshots at other companies on social media or on the air makes you look like a tool, no matter what your position in the company or socioeconomic status is.

Is it even confirmed that Shawn is the head booker of NXT?

There's "The One and Only" featuring The Fonz playing a wrestler. I have no memory as to whether it's any good or not.

The casting for Fritz is spot on. Looking over the full cast list on IMDB and I don't see Chris listed anywhere but Jack is. I wonder if they thought having five brothers die was just too much?

I was hoping Cedric would come out to join Lashley and the Profits to set up a Survivor Series tag against the LWO, but it looks like there's no PPV between now and then so plenty of time for something like that to potentially happen. Priest not cashing in also surprised me but they really sold how beaten up he was.

As one might expect from a prequel to a remake no one asked for, Pet Sematary Bloodlines was pretty dumb. The general concept isn't a bad idea and when I initially read the book I thought there was more to the mythology that could be explored. The backstory just doesn't get fleshed out enough (no mention of the wendigo) and even leaving it open ended for audience speculation, there still isn't much there. The lack of Maine accents is perhaps the most egregious offense. VHS 85 was a nice pallet cleanser. Normally horror franchises run out of ideas the more they go, but maybe it's the anthology element but these are doing exactly the opposite with every installment getting better. Just about every episode is solid to really good, with two of them interconnectiong (and I have a theory that two of the others connect as well). I don't know if the whole thing was shot on video or not, but it achieves the retro look without beating you over the head with a "hey, remember the 80s!" aesthetic. Most of the stories did legitimately look like ultra low budget horror movies with graphic practical effects that VHS collectors are always after. The wraparound story is kind of weak, but it's by no means bad.