Gordi the former AEW fan

I'm surprised that Diana isn't involved.

And here's Jericho being interviewed in SI. AEW is getting some pretty good mainstream attention these days! https://www.si.com/wrestling/2020/09/04/aew-all-out-chris-jericho-orange-cassidy-mimosa-mayhem#:~:text=Q%26A%3A Why Chris Jericho Decided,Mimosa Mayhem With Orange Cassidy&text=For Jericho%2C this marks another,of a potentially legitimate star.

You dudes are not wrong, but one thing occur to me: Won't All Out 2020 be taking place... ... on Russev Day? Also: Hell yeah I wanna see Miro vs Ishii, too.

You can easily see the difference if you compare older and more recent photos or footage. His nose looks completely different.

That makes me so happy. A perfect example. He's a box named Ken, who is... a box (and if persistent rumours are to be believed, he is a box named Ken who is actually: Osaka Pro's Black Buffalo)!

Absolutely. "Rowdy" Roddy Piper. "Ravishing" Rick Rude. "Superstar" Billy Graham. Classic names. Descriptive and evocative. But it's still my second-favourite naming structure, by quite a bit.

I am a big fan of wrestling names that are constructed like this: [wrestler's name] [the] [description of wrestler's character] The perfect examples, in my mind, are: Andre the Giant (he's a guy named Andre who is a giant) Abdullah the Butcher (he's a guy named Abdullah who will carve you up, like a butcher) and Dick the Bruiser (he's a guy named Dick who will leave bruises on your body) Less perfect but still pretty good examples (in my opinion) would be: Kamala the Ugandan Headhunter (not his official name, but he was announced as such often enough... and his character was certainly a guy named Kamala who was a headhunter from Uganda) Nord the Barbarian (because Nord is his surname, which I like slightly less... but Barbarian works well as a description of his character) I just get a huge kick out of names like that. They make me happy. I wish they were more common. Unacceptable examples in my book would be stuff like Dwayne the Rock (because he was never called that and because "the Rock" is his nickname rather than a description of his character) or Tommy Billington, the Dynamite Kid (because that's what you'd call him if you were writing an obituary, not if you were introducing him on his way to the ring) or Bret the Hitman (because that was always followed up by his last name) or Chris the Obnoxious Rock Star (because I am probably the only person who thinks that should be Jericho's wrestling name) or Randy the Ram (because he was an awesome movie character rather than an actual pro wrestler, and "The Ram" is also more of a nickname). Can anybody think of any more examples of pro wrestling names structured like [name] [the] [description]? I'm hoping there are a ton of them that I just can't think of at the moment.

Kingston and Archer are good, realistic picks but I kind of want Miro to show up as a massive surprise entrant and take the whole thing.

I don't want to be controversial, but it's my opinion that young boy Toshiaki Kawada has the potential to be pretty good at this professional wrestling thing.

Here ya go:

It was at least partly because of his dad. John's dad loved pro wrestling, but couldn't watch his son's matches from Japan. He came back to Canada to wrestle in Vancouver All Star wrestling, which was still technically part of the NWA and still had national TV in Canada at that time. That's where I met him, and that's where he got the call to go to the WWF. John was always happy when he dad came out to the matches in Cloverdale. He told me his dad never saw any of his amateur wrestling or sumo bouts, but loved to watch him wrestle pro style.

Shunji Takano is also the brother of George "The Cobra" Takano. According to Wikipedia, they ran a promotion together (Pro Wrestling Crusaders) from '92 through '94. I agree that Tenta was already a pretty damned good big man worker in '89. I'd go so far as to say that he was a great big man by '94, giving the supremely enjoyable tags with Vader against Albright and Yamazaki as my primary evidence. Also according to Wikipedia, Shunji and Tenta were a team in the '88 Tag League.

Microwave popcorn is a relative rarity in Japan, but I found some in a kind of off-brand Costco called A-Price. Decided not to buy any just yet, though. Now I kind of wish I had. I think popcorn might go well with this thread (and as @Morganti points out, Dolfan's Mania thread). I like eating while I'm reading more than I like eating while I'm watching matches.

I feel like this is sufficiently hard-hitting. It's a nice chance to have a look at New Japan in a baseball stadium, as well:

It was nice to see LIJ having Naito's back for once! And, yeah, Yano defending a title in stipulation matches has a pretty high entertainment potential.

Such simple, effective storytelling. It sets up all kinds of potential future match-ups.

I think Archer's well on his way to becoming the new king of squash matches. He just chucks those smaller guys around in such an entertaining fashion!

That whole alternate timeline would almost be worth it for the bizarre spectacle of Hellwig giving the sad, dejected, "I ain't nothin' but a piece of (crap), a BIG FAT PIECE OF (CRAP)!" promo at Over the Edge 1998 Anyway, here's a clubbbering machine vs a wrestling machine:

What really strikes me looking at that card is how many of those wrestlers were either completely off my radar or at best "I think that name rings a bell..." to me just two years ago. I mean, in August 2018: MJF, Wardlow, Hikaru Shida, Adam Page, Orange Cassidy, Evil Uno, Stu Grayson, QT Marshall, Allie... (and if we are including Casino Battle Royale and tag team gauntlet participants: Darby Allin, Brian Cage, Ricky Starks, Pentagon Jr., Rey Fenix, The Butcher, The Blade, Private Party, Jurassic Express...) And now they are all wrestlers that I know, that I genuinely have opinions about! For the most part, they are wrestlers that I'm genuinely excited to see. About half of them rank highly on my "top currently active pro wrestlers" list. I'm sure that people who are more into the American indie scene knew some of those names pretty well two years ago, but I'd be amazed if - even on these boards - there's anyone who had opinions about all of them as wrestlers back in August of 2018. Good job, AEW, on building up a roster like that!

We might need to start up a "Man's Inhumanity to Man" thread, for stuff like that.

Damn! I didn't think that steroids existed yet, in the black-and-white-TV era.

Hey, it's Sho Funaki's birthday today! Happy birthday, Sho Funaki!

There is a pretty solid argument to be made that, in fact, *this* is the greatest squash match of all time:

Not sure where else to put this. The last line of this (classic) sketch is an absolutely genius reference to classic British pro wrestling:

Yeah, that is just an all-time great pro wrestling match. This one, from the same CC, is damned near as good (and harrowingly stiff and hard-fought):