HumanChessgame

I don't know about the airing schedule changing, but here is the card- AEW World Trios Title Match Billy Gunn & The Acclaimed (Anthony Bowens & Max Caster) (c) vs. Isiah Kassidy & The Hardys (Jeff Hardy & Matt Hardy) NJPW STRONG Openweight Title Match Eddie Kingston (c) vs. Rocky Romero Tag Team Match Caleb Crush & Gunnar vs. The Righteous (Dutch & Vincent) AEW Women's World Title #1 Contendership Match Hikaru Shida vs. Ruby Soho

My favorite was bringing a flask of vodka, rum, or some other spiritous beverage and pouring it into one of those jumbo sized red flavored slurpees (you give the flavor of those by the color and not whatever the actual flavor is supposed to be) and basically having your own discount margarita. I think the best experience was doing this when going to see Snakes on a Plane after my lady friend and I had partook in a lot of the green gimmick beforehand.

Jarrett and the Brothers Armstrong against a couple of midcard faces at the 95 Survivor Series would be one of those overlooked matches of the era that's fondly remembered by enthusiasts.

I kinda want Riddle to appear in the next Bloodsport, but other than that don't have much of an interest in seeing him. He's good in the ring, but it seems like his Jeff Spicoli gimmick isn't actually a character.

I've always thought Ziggler was one of the better utility guys on the roster and figured he was a WWE lifer as long as they had green members of the roster that needed to look good. That said I don't have any desire to see him in AEW. They could do a lot worse than him as a coach or agent though. Benjamin was another really under-utilized guy and The Hurt Business was the best thing that happened to he and Alexander. Disolving that was one of the dumbest moves creative had made. As much as I'd like Alexander to keep his job, I wouldn't mind the two of them showing up as a team in AEW. Alexander especially deserves a solid run. Given his former partner Caprice Coleman is still there in ROH I'd think he'd be an advocate. Ali is a no brainer as a pickup in AEW. Guy is great in the ring and always seems like he never got a chance to really show what he's capable of or get a consistent push. As far as the other names, I didn't even realize most of them were even still employed.

Eddie/Claudio was everything it should have been. I really thought they were going to have Eddie continue to be the guy who can't win the big one and drop the fall once again here and was pleasantly surprised when he finally got his moment. I was surprised Mox/Fenix went so long and that Fenix ended up going over clean. Then again the ending made me wonder if they called an audible. Jericho/Sammy was what it was. Good to see Sammy go full blown heel, though I have no interest in Jericho trying to be some kind of face after this. Toni/Saraya was solid. I would much rather Toni be champ as she's a lot better, but her act is still heating up right now so she didn't need to win at the moment. Main event was good and I was almost expecting Joe to win up until Cole came back out. Joe shaking MJF's hand after he cheated to win felt out of place though.

I could totally see Mance Warner doing this with someone.

Starks' spear has always looked like crap and he's way too small of a guy for it to look effective, same with Edge. The Bobby Hill reference to Danielson getting a nut shot got a chuckle out of me. I actually like The Righteous (though they were much better with Tyler Bateman and Vita VonStarr also in the group) so it was surprising seeing them get a win over The Hardys. They'll be a good space filler match against Cole and MJF. Even though it was a short match, I dug FTR/Bear Country. Their schtick is one of those things I find a lot funnier and more engaging than I probably should. Is Andrade still affiliated with the other LFI guys in AEW? Even if not it's not like continuity matters much and can get retconned for some arbitrary reason, so I thought they might be setting up an LFI/BCG match for the next PPV. I get they were trying to build Britt up as the franchise player of the women's division during lockdown and whatnot, but she's really not gotten any better.

As good as MJF is as AEW's franchise player and how mediocre the WWE is on average, I kinda want to see how he'd fare there. If he were to sign a three year contract next year he could theoretically be back in AEW when he's a little over 30 and have a lot more experience under his belt. It's been a thing in WWE for a while now where top of the card people get really stale and it's not like the territory system where someone could leave for a year or to when they wore out their welcome, go somewhere else for a year or two, then come back fresh with new people to work with. Drew McIntyre leaving for a while and coming back is a good example of how that could benefit someone. Even though Starks' personality would lend itself well to "sports entertainment" I see him getting lost in the shuffle there pretty easily. Like others have said, he needs a consistent upper card push in AEW sooner rather than later.

PWI 500 Top 10- 1 – Seth Rollins 2 – Roman Reigns 3 – Jon Moxley 4 – Gunther 5 – Hijo Del Vikingo 6 – MJF 7 – Kazuchika Okada 8 – Orange Cassidy 9 – Josh Alexander 10 – Cody Rhodes

Starting at 8:30, a partial list of drugs CM Punk has never done -

I've always had a dislike of Apple products and my first MP3 player was a 64GB Creative Zen nomad that was similar in size to an Ipod with the same capacity but had a few other features and supported just about every audio format there was. Winamp (It really whipped the llama's ass!) was always my media player of choice so I never cared about the additional features if itunes and whatnot so the Zen's software to just drag and drop stuff was fine with me. It eventually gave me the click of death so I replaced it with a Zune, and it was just as good. I just used the Zune's software to transfer and organize files so I didn't care about the additional features and it was really simple to use. It had great battery life, could play all sorts of movie and video formats, and was a great little device overall. I remember I'd keep a season of The Venture Bros. on there along with my music if I got bored. Eventually I was able to put an even larger micro SD card in my phone and that pretty much replaced the need for a separate device.

Wrestling tapes and CDs were a majority of my ebay purchases from 2000-2005 or so. For both things you'd often see people offering lots where there were two or three selections you'd really want then one or two other shows or artists that you weren't really familiar with but just took because they came with the rest of the pack and hoped they'd be good. I still have one of those 120 sleeve CD binders that's half full with wrestling DVDs of various quality and dubious origin and a shelf of tapes. A lot of stuff I haven't watched in forever but is still decent stuff I'm not going to part with quite yet. There was an independent video store down the street from my college that sold all sorts of cult movies (and in the pre-torrent days they had a bunch of bootleg DVDs of currently running movies behind the counter if you knew how to ask), porn, anime, and other stuff you couldn't find at Suncoast. They had a pretty decent collection of indy and Japanese wrestling there as well and I still have my clamshell tape set of the 2000 Super J cup. Being Gen X (1981) I am also attached to my physical media and have no intention to stop buying it. I think part of it is that so much of my CD collection I bought on ebay, a long defunct music store that specialized in metal, or overseas distros and with all the trouble I went to I don't want to just get rid of them. I remember one ebay seller from Russia that I bought from several times where the CDs would take at least a month to arrive and come wrapped up in thick paper and tied with twine and covered with customs stamps that I always thought looked really retro. That and I like to actually own a physical piece of whatever it is. Not to mention the process of putting on an entire album/CD/tape and listening to the whole thing, which it seems streaming music services are pushing by the wayside. My vinyl buying is either 1. all time favorite releases I want a copy of 2. new stuff from artists I really like that I'm going to enjoy an immersive listening experience instead of background music 3. low priced used stuff I happen to find. I still buy new and used CDs but am not terribly big into the recent trend of cassettes making a comeback. I've got fond memories of making mix tapes and still have plenty of my old ones, but overall it's not as good a format as CD. I'll buy stuff on bandcamp if the digital release is just the best option but have no interest in using spotify. My phone has my entire music collection on it (probably close to 1000 albums) and I use that in the car, which is a 2015 and would have cost an extra $1000 for the next trim upgrade for a CD player.

The finish of the six man prompted me to look back to see if Ciampa and Walter had a match before and I remembered that they fought on Mania weekend two years ago for the NXT UK title. Even though I don't remember the match, I mentioned it was brutal and hard hitting in the thread and it was universally agreed by about everyone else that it was a great outing. I'm now thinking that it's Ciampa who takes the IC belt of Walter and I'd really like to see them have a lengthy PPV match.

I've eaten at Gwarbar several times and it's always been great. Then again I didn't try any of the meat substitute dishes. My friend I was there with one time got one of the seitan burgers and said it was great, so I took her word for it. There's interesting memorabilia all over the place and there was a steady diet of good quality metal and hardcore on the PA.

There are sadly a lot of dudes who never grew out of the scene "us against the world, fuck anyone who doesn't fit our exact mindset" stance (which is kind of hypocritical on a scene built around inclucivity but whatever). A lot of them are the people who peaked in their 20s as some kind of big name in whatever small scene they were a part of and can't let it go. A little while back the local independent paper had an article on venues that were up and running post-covid and there was a small blurb about house shows. It was something pretty simple like "a longtime staple of the punk scene, house shows are making a comeback with places like *insert names of a few places here* regularly hosting shows". Some guy makes a rant on FB about how "the scene doesn't need any promotion by any media outlet and if you don't know where house shows are then you don't need to know!" or something along those lines. Just a complete overreaction to a pretty innocuous comment.

Gable has defied pretty much all shit booking odds to get himself over while being one of the more underrated guys on the roster. From his team with Jordan to his singles runs he's been awesome at just about every turn. His two matches against Jack Gallagher on 205 Live (back when that was one of the best and least watched of the WWE shows) get slept on because of where they took place (and probably because of what happened with Gallagher) but were amazing.

Despite all the drama surrounding AEW this weekend and the haphazard way this show was thrown together, this show continued in the tradition of AEW PPVs over-delivering despite a lackluster build or plans and storylines getting derailed. Just about every match told a story and was really well put together. The crowd were either behaving themselves or just cleverly miced. Can anyone who was there live speak on the attendance? Collision looked pretty damn sparse last night. Some of my least favorite tropes in wrestling involve the "heel acts legit injured to the point of having medical come out then fakes out the opponent" and "wrestler gets taken out of the match with the injury but runs out hurt and makes the save". I was thinking we'd get the former here but ended up with the latter. I get Dark Order are basically JTTS but they still ended up looking like goofs just so MJF and Cole could do their schtick. That said I'm all in on a Joe/MJF program. Taylor and Joe had a nice stiff hoss fight that delivered as expected. Based on Joe and MJF's interaction before the match I thought they might actually have Taylor go over so Joe could move into place for something else. Either way Taylor should get a bigger push. Luchasaurus/Darby was about as expected. A bunch of random people with no connection to the feud was a bit odd. I had been expecting AR Fox to make the save to keep his redemption angle going, though maybe him not coming out was part of the story? The only issue with Hobbs/Miro was that neither guy really needed to lose here. Miro has never been ever to have any steady momentum and Hobbs' face/heel alignment and feuds change on a regular basis. The crowd was really hot for this one and both guys looked great. I do think Miro needed the win a bit more given how sporadically he's around and Hobbs got his head back afterwards giving us a sign we get another meat slapper out of these guys soon. Ruby is pretty hit or miss for me but she was on her game for tonight. Statlander being awesome had a bit to do with that as well. Like other people I had concerns about Danielson doing something ill advised in this match when he's not 100% yet. I'd had to be either of these guys in the morning as they whipped the dogshit out of eachother. The stipulation was smartly worked into all the spots and both guys got juice to keep things looking more brutal. I'm here for Danielson getting Final Countdown as his ppv theme. BCC and Kingston/Shibata had a really stiff exchange that made me want to see a Claudio/Shibata solo outing. All the guys got their shit in, moves looked snug, just about everything landed and had an undercurrent of intesnity to it. This reminded me of something that would have main evented an ROH show in 2006. I think Omega's head is still sailing somewhere over Lake Michigan after that brutal lariat Take hit. The match in general was something that would have been right at home in NJPW. There's some finisher killing and gratuitous kickouts to be expected in this, mainly that avalance blue thunder bomb, but I don't think they went too far here. Really surprised Takeshita went over more or less clean. This should have been the main event. The parts of the 8 man tag I paid attention to were non-stop spots with a bit of clever interplay between The Bucks and FTR cooperating on moves with eachother. The ending seemed really abrupt and I kept waiting for something to happen after but it just kind of fizzled out. Moxley had a match where he didn't get color but the other guy got a gusher. That has to be a first, at least in AEW. I think this was the time for OC to drop the title as his schtick is starting to get old.

Short show with several long matches. Becky/Trish overdelivered and was definitely the best performance I've seen out of Trish. Didn't watch Knight/Miz or Rey/Theory. The tag titles match was your standard WWE chaotic brawl, but Owens and Sami pulled out enough entertaining stuff to keep the spectacle engaging. Owens also caught a decent gusher. The numbers game of Judgement Day getting them the victory was unsurprising. Seth/Nak was a good match, though there being no doubt about Rollins retaining kind of kept me from being more engaged. I was kind of surprised Priest didn't come out to cash in after the main event.

Has anyone claimed this is a work a la MJF not being on a plane to Vegas yet?

The opening tag was fine but it sucks Aussie Open had to lose the titles for an angle with two main roster guys. If Jungle Boy/Hook had just been a straight up match I would have liked it more, but in a show with two other gimmick brawls the stipulation was kind of unnecessary here. What In the last Punk/Joe match they told a story of both guys needing to fight harder to win early as time and mileage have prevented them from going as long as they did in their earlier matches. This continued with that by Joe trying to maul Punk and use is power to overcome him and Punk just trying to do his best to counter what he could. Punk's ego got the best of him when the Hogan and Funk tributes got a little to cute for their own good and Joe almost got him with the rollup. Then you have Punk busting out the Pepsi Plunge again as a counter to get the win. I liked the match but it wasn't their best. The six man tag featured guys I like fine as workers but have no investement in otherwise and don't really have a lot of interest in the surrounding storyline. Match itself was fine. Bucks/FTR was probably my favorite match of the night. I like the Bucks fine when they keep their schtick to a minimum and actually wrestle, and either FTR's style helped them rein it in or they just decided it would be in their best interest to work a more straight match. Some nice callbacks to earlier spots (Cash missing the 450) and the Shatter Machine counter to win looked cool. I'm legit surprised FTR won. Did Santana do a reverse WWE and gain a first name? Penta's costume change mid-match was...definitely a thing. This was the average AEW garbage match. I'm surprised OC got the most juice out of anyone. His taipei deathmatch finishing punch was a cool spot. The women's match was shorter than I thought it would be (and why wasn't there one on the preshow?) but pretty good despite multiperson matches having clusterfuck potential. Isn't the Knight family kind of persona non grata after the speaking out movement? Didn't really care about the coffin match. I'm sure the UK crowd enjoyed seeing Sting live. Jericho played to his strengths in his match and didn't try to go overboard or longer than the match needed to. I was looking forward to the trios match as HOB are always a high point to me until the NHB stipulation was annouced. Four of these on a show is overkill. I get the show was big on faces going over and Billy getting his happy ending, but HOB didn't need to lose here. Cole and MJF told a good story of two friends who wanted to see who was better but had enough lingering rulebreaking tendencies to push the limits of sportsmanship. Cole started bending the rules until flat out playing the heel and MJF holding back on letting his true nature loose. That brainbuster on the stairs looked nasty for both guys. I figured the ending would be a big dog and pony show and that's pretty much what we got. Good show overall that looked to be focused towards being safe in terms of not doing anything too over the top or endings that would be potentially controversial in order to send everyone home happy. I'm curious to hear feedback from people who were there live about how everything went over.

Whitmer and Jacobs had some really good matches as a team. Offhand I recall the match against Roddy and Evans from Manhattan Mayhem (5/7/05) and against Roddy and Aries (1/28/06) being especially good. I feel like there are a few more I don't see on cagematch or can't remember offhand. Jacobs and Whitmer had some great matches against eachother in IWA-MS (including a no rope barbed wire match) as well.

Was Bray still technically with the company? His last match was at the Rumble in January. I had assumed he'd been let go in the interim.

Arleen Sorkin, whose mannerisms and personality were the basis for Harley Quinn (and her original voice actor) has died at 67.

Holy shit...just the other day I was wondering what had become of him. While the latter half of his WWE run left a lot to be desired, peak Wyatt Family was one of the most intriguing factions and storylines out there. I remember the first time they squared off with The Shield and the tension was palpable. He was definitely one of the more creative guys out there who could have easily made it as an actor. Anyways, here is one of my favorite individual ring entrances of all time