Gordlow

I am Sampsan

Brian Cage just keeps getting more jacked every time we see him. It's amazing. At this point, he's thicker than he is tall. So, I'd like to suggest a new nickname for him. (Edit: also: Steiner math!)

Dragon's last match: Regal (Oops. Wrong thread).

I'm still on hiatus from these boards, but this is (to me anyway) too good not to share. Three wrestlers from Nepal: Himalayan Tiger, the first Nepalese pro wrestler, Unika, the first female wrestler from Nepal,and the staggeringly gorgeous Jureli, came to Osaka for the first time today. Cooger hosted the welcome party, and I along with my friends Kenji, Ji-sama, and Bodyguard,(and indy wrestler Moriya, from FUCK and AJPW and etc etc) were on the welcoming committee. It was fucking amazing. Cooger's friends and the Osaka Nepalese community coming together. Tiger, Unika, and Jureli are big celebrities in Nepal but they are totally down to earth and I think it was mind-blowing for the Nepalese folks to just hang with them at a rooftop BBQ party. For my part, I bonded hard with Unika and Jureli. I hung out speaking English and Japanese with the Osaka natives and Nepalese immigrants. I had the time of my fucking life. How I wish DEAN were still with us. I bet he knew who these wrestlers are! If there's anywhere in the world where someone might know, it's surely here... *puts up the secunda caida signal* Gonna post, like, 20 pictures. Hang on, it'll take a while.

You guys wanna hear Bodyguard singing his AJPW entrance theme? Of course you do! Do you wanna hear Bodyguard and Gordlow duetting (badly) on Terry Funk's theme? Well, too bad. I'm gonna post that, too. Went to the Bodybar a couple of weeks ago with my good friend (also Canadian, now living in the Tokyo area) who used to post here as The Cobra 2. Had a GREAT time. This is another "goodbye for now" post from me. Partly I am busy with other stuff. Partly I have grown terribly weary of the bad faith posters and arguments about meaningless rumours more or less dominating the discussion here these days. Ignore function doesn't help when too many people keep taking the bait. It's actually affecting my ability to enjoy wrestling to the fullest. (as opposed to helping me enjoy wrestling more, which is what I usually get out of the DVDVR boards). Congrats, Bad Faith Army! You've managed to (indirectly) troll Gordlow off the board, temporarily at least. Know that I love discussing wrestling and sharing laughs with the big handful of you who still post here in good faith. Know that I am sorry to miss out on Secret Santo. I'll continue to lurk, casually. I'll see ya when I see ya. Gonna post a couple of pictures here (in this post) too when I have time. Let somebody love you, before it's too late.

Does my heart good to see Billyken Kid doing charity work for kids with pixelated faces.

In case you don't have enough to watch between 5 hours of AEW and the G1, here's an hour and 25 minutes of highlights from 2019-2020 AEW, including title changes and debuts. Official video. With this and the FTR compilation video, they have been doing some outstanding fan service on YouTube recently. Here's hoping we get more of these. Edit: We are DEFINITELY getting more! The 2021 one is airing live on YT right now.

The Owen thing is definitely 100 ordinary singles matches in exhibition. I was at >130 total exhibition matches when I unlocked him. So presumably I played over 30 tag, falls count anywhere etc etc matches, which seems right. He's VERY fun to play with! In terms of match ratings, I am not sure about the relationship between difficulty and ratings (which seems like a reasonable possibility) but I have managed 5 and 7 star ratings on normal. I will try on other difficulties later. Watched a video that suggested that fast squashes are good for **** matches, ***** or ******* matches need to be long and violent, with signature spamming and thumbtacks and destroyed video screens. Seems to be accurate. I got my first 5-star and 7-star matches, doing lights out. Other people suggest sig-spamming the Casino Battle Royal, and that you can get ***** by sig/finish spamming a regular match. Time and health are NOT important when going for the highest scores. Back and forth seems to work better than squashing going for seven. To me, that was an interesting surprise. Edit: apparently it also really helps to use one of the PPV arenas, and to make it a world championship match, though the latter is certainly not necessary. Finally, if anyone is curious, it's not difficult to get an "A" rank in RTE playing on easy difficulty. You can absolutely build up strong CAWS without min/maxing. Just keep morale high, do intense workouts (with high energy so you don't get injured) and Rampage matches. Go for squashes to keep energy high and get **** ratings. My last run-through I got my CAW to 51/5/20 on easy without playing minigames. That's good enough! Though, I don't play online matches. Possibly you need to min max to build a CAW for ranked? My basic pattern is dining - workout - other match - go out - Dynamite, but it's helpful to be flexible. And always do any activity with a red exclamation mark. Agree that Unyielding Poise and Guardbreaker is an awesome combo. Agree that playing as OC is almost too much fun. Yuka Sakazaki, as well! Particularly if you turn in-match music off so you can hear the wrestlers. Also, the skateboard rules. And breaking tables is bizarrely satisfying. And the jukebox feature kicks ass. Love this game! Hope they treat it like the developers treat No Man's Sky and keep adding to it and giving us free stuff. Create some good will in the community, AEW!

Well, that was a GREAT two hours of pro wrestling TV. I was literally just saying to my friend on a chat that I don't personally care for the Collision announce team, that them repeatedly overexplaining lucha libre/masks and Nigel's forced/unnatural heel commentary feel way too WWE for me... but in my opinion Collision is the show for everyone who wishes AEW could be more like WWE so that's OK... Then Minoru Suzuki came out to fight Darby Allin. I stand corrected. It's kind of funny how often I end up feeling "happy to have been proven wrong." This was certainly one of those times! Suzuki vs Darby has to be the LEAST WWE pro wrestling match possible. Of course, I LOVED it. And the ladder match was NUTS. And the storytelling in the tag title match was impeccable. Just tremendous pro wrestling TV. I have two chat buddies who are going to next week's Collision. They were eating their hearts out that Hartford got such a great show. Hartford deserved it, though. That crowd was GREAT all night. Who could have predicted, after the first Collision, that Punk would get a totally mixed reaction, MJF would get a massive face pop, and FTR would get BOOED just a few weeks later. Crazy stuff. Too much shadenfreude. Also: Starks and Joe both legit cracked me up today. Pro Wrestling is so great!

I am only one person, and I am not actually Japanese, but I think it's safe to assume that I am speaking for the entire country when I say, "No, thank you."

Fairly skippable Rampage, if you are feeling the G1/five hours of AEW burn. If you've got the energy, though: Battle Royal was fun. Sets up a good match for the future. Ending of Kip vs Komander was spectacular. Shida vs Nyla was a million times better than Britt vs Taya. Aussie Open vs Vikingo & Komander announced for Dynamite 200! Honestly, I'd like to skip Collision tomorrow, but "MJF & Adam Cole challenge champions FTR for the AEW World Tag Team Titles. Andrade El Idolo and Buddy Matthews compete in a ladder match for Andrade El Idolo's mask. In Trios action, Bullet Club Gold's Juice Robinson & The Gunns face El Hijo Del Vikingo, Darius Martin & Action Andretti" (per Fite) all sound good. I am pretty curious to see what will happen in the tag match, and that trios is a nutzoid, only-in-AEW thing, and Buddy Matthews is great and I don't remember ever seeing him in a singles ladder match. There's a pretty good UFC card tomorrow after Collision, too. Henare vs Finlay and Yano vs Cobb are the first two matches on the G1 card tomorrow. Probably gonna at least watch those two. Kind of nutziod, only-in-the-G1 matches that should both be really fun in COMPLETELY different ways. Edit: PLUS Natch just posted a link to a two-hour FTR in AEW compilation video! Yowza! Edit 2: Butcher & Blade with hair wearing all white! Pandemic-era quiet matches! Memories light the corners of my mind. Misty, water-coloured memories... Also the new McDonald's shaka shaka potato flavour is sour creme and onion! I never imagined that we might get that some day. Went to McD's for the first time in MONTHS yesterday. Cheeseburger flavour shaka shaka and Lotteria's butter shoyu furu potai are both better, but sc&o makes a solid third best Japanese flavoured fries on Gordlow's list. Creme or cream! It's cream, right? Grew up in Canada. Everything had French and English labels. ANYWAY, too much of a good thing recently is what I think I am trying to say here. In a normal week this Rampage would not have seemed skippable.

One on one? Never. In a tag? Never. I think they were both in Casino-type matches together before, but that's it. Mox matched up extremely well with Darby in the past. Mox won both of their singles matches but Darby came out of them looking like a future star. (Edit: Mox and Darby also had a singles in North East Wrestling, per Cagematch. Not surecifvI have ever seen that one). I have high expectations for Mox v Orange.

They were in Albany. "Steamed hams" American is an Albany expression. It's a near-perfect reference, in my opinion. I popped for it. Edit: Casey beat me to it. I should have known Casey was at the bat. Edit: since I have already made a post: Mox and Cassidy should form a team: Blood Orange. Mad King should do a thing where he got addicted to caffeine fighting off jetlag in Japan: "Coffee" Kingston. Final edit: Those who are fans of Jake Hager style hat-based psychology NEED TO watch the first few minutes of Naito vs Haste. I felt like that was booked specifically to make me happy.

Damn, Britt vs Taya failed to live up to my very low expectations. I think that might have been the worst match in Dynamite history. Slow and awkward. I legit hope they are both OK because they did NOT look OK in there. Remainded me of Ibushi in B and G. Swerve vs Darby and Anger/Regret Fox vs Orange were both really fun, with innovative spots and interrelated storytelling. Ishii vs Kingston was GREAT. Everything I wanted it to be. Two guys I love to watch just going 100%. Reminded me in many ways of Bryan vs MiSu, and I have no higher praise to give. Cobb vs Zack and (surprisingly, to me) Finlay vs Tonga were also really good. Still enjoying the hell out of Fight Forever. Possibly sinking too much time into it. Made Shinsuke, Okada, and Cobb CAWS. None of them are note perfect, but they are all fun to play with. Nice random-ass Rampage coming up in two days. I am stoked for Shida vs Nyla! Enjoyed Hook's "training" video. Chuck should team with Allin. The Kentucky Darby.