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Gordi the former AEW fan

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Everything posted by Gordi the former AEW fan

  1. It kind of boggles my mind that there are apparently people who feel that Adam Page wasn't "made" as champion by that match. Here's a complete, unabridged list of everything important that was lost by the match not ending in a clear Hangman victory: A huge pop. Here's a partial list of what was gained: Page is still champ. Bryan's undefeated streak remains intact. Respect was paid to pro wrestling tradition from the territory days. We will get a rematch, which will sell a ton of tickets and draw a lot of eyes, and give us another great match to enjoy where the outcome is in doubt until the final bell. It was absolutely the right call to go 60.
  2. You are gonna have to make some room on your "Greatest AEW Matches" thread, my friend. That was amazing. Had me hooked right up until the final bell. Puts Page up there with classic NWA champs like Brisco, Funk, Race... with guys like Ric, Baba, Nagata, Fujinami etc etc among the "guys with great 60-minute title defenses" pantheon. Rest of the show seemed pretty damned good, but to be honest I was spent after watching that. And, after all of our speculation, I don't think there can be much doubt that they made the right call here, going 60.
  3. I can't help but wonder if possibly this and other kinds of "they've got too many people doing a fairly specific xyz type of sequence" observations might be linked to AEW developing a video game. Having heard about the hellacious amount of money they are sinking into their games development division, it wouldn't shock me to learn that there was a bit of "tail wagging the dog" going on where, you know, if they are sinking a lot of development time into making - for example - a good Oklahoma Stampede type of animation they might want to get as much value and use as possible out of that, and could conceivably be encouraging some members of the roster to add some kind of Oklahoma Stampede variation into their actual move set... Could also be a (not the, but a) motivating factor behind them signing so many interesting names... As I've said before, my personal dream for an AEW video game is for the basic A-button moves to be a punch, an Irish whip, a collar-and-elbow tie-up, and a Canadian Destroyer.
  4. Hey! @Phil Schneider got an article published on The Ringer! Unsurprisingly, it's really good, too: https://www.theringer.com/2021/12/14/22832728/ring-of-honor-roh-wrestling-best-matches One crazy thought that struck me while reading that: Samoa Joe vs Kenta Kobashi seems like a pretty recent match to me. Jumbo vs Tenryu '89 seems like ancient history. Yet, the distance (in time) between Jumbo vs Tenryu and Joe vs Kobashi (16 years) is essentially the same as the distance between Joe vs Kobashi and right now.
  5. Holy fudging heck! Winter Is Coming, my lads and queens! Last year we got "It's STAAAAANNNNNGGGG!!" and Kenny deeply crushing the hearts of about 15% of the posters here by beating Mox to become the AEW World Champion. What will this year bring? Shida vs Deeb Deebs won round one (delaying Shida's 50th win), then Sheeds won their tournament match, but then Deebs got revenge by helping Nyla knock Sheeds outa the tournament... who will win the rubber match?!?!?! D-Bry vs Hangmin! WINTER IS COOMING AHHHHHHHHH I'm not COOMING AHHHHHHHHH. you're COOMING AHHHHHHHHH. You'd have to assume they're not going to take the belt off of Page this soon. You'd also have to assume they are going to keep Danielson's unstoppable win streak alive. I am on tenterhooks here. Dynamite Diamond Final: MJF vs. Dante The diamond ring is such a big part of Friedman's gimmick... but also this sure would put Dante over hyuuuuge, and he's on the verge of making that leap (no pun intended)... A Sydal vs the guy so awesome I changed my name for him. 1) I have to imagine these guys will work a very compelling David vs Goliath thing in there. 2) Sydal bumping for Wardlow is going to be sick. 3) Which is funnier: Gordlow, or Wardi? Or: Neither. Get over yourself, dude. Presumably other stuff! Maybe a big debut!
  6. Chi-poo-soo! Yes. Chips. Oh... Chi poo soo. This video pretty much sums up my free time during normal daily life, pre-Corona, except in my case it's usually nice Japanese people (sometime even pretty joshi wrestlers like Apple Miyuki -speaking of Apples, as it were) (or handsome male wrestlers like Kotoge) teaching me about local cuisine, and I speak a little more Japanese than Mei-chan speaks English. This was legitimately eating Mexican-style tacos in Osaka with a bunch of wrestling fans from all over the world (Japan, Canada, France, and Mexico). Jorge, the Mexican guy, spent a lot of our time there explaining one thing or another about the food as Chizuki (who speaks much better English than I do Japanese) and I tried to translate it for the other Japanese people at the table. Really very very similar to that video.
  7. 12 weeks into the diet, 1 week to go. Half a kilo above my goal weight. Down almost 15 kilos in 12 weeks. Under 100 kilos for the first time in years and years. Plan is to maintain until Spring and try another fast and three months of dieting to see if I can get really lean.
  8. OK. Listen. The combined billed weight of The Lucha Brothers is a disgustingly scrawny 370 pounds. Not even 200 pounds per brother. FTR, on the other hand, weigh in at a manly combined billed 446 pounds! Almost 100 kilos each. So, the result of this match is a forgone conclusion, right? Nope! What the hell, AEW? At least they got the women's match right, with Nyla being billed as having 40-plus pounds on Anna. Dang. Hook looked pretty good in there. Some of the credit for that probably belongs to Fuego, who bumped and sold really well for Hook's offense... which, ahem, cough, is the only acceptable role for a normal-sized human being inside a pro wrestling ring. Speaking of ordinary-sized regular human beings: Two such persons in the main event to set up another match down the road with another sub-190-pound pip-squeak? With all of their friends and cronies with (here comes the up-to-date cultural reference!) buggy-whip arms hanging around ringside. What gives? Little dudes fighting little dudes is OK for a mid-card comedy match once in a while, maybe... but the main event of a pro wrestling TV show?? Good thing I had my fainting couch cleaned last week. It's like AEW thinks that looks, charm, talent, charisma, athleticism, ring savvy, and all of those other kinds of "icing" are more important than the "cake" (as in beef-cake) (which is size and muscularity). Some of those guys have potential, though, if they'd just get on dangerous doses of anabolic steroids, human growth hormone, human chorionic gonadotropin. selective androgen receptor modulators, creatine, and insulin, and start injecting synthol into their lats, traps, bis, tris, pecs, delts, rhomboids, and so on... Seriously, I am hoping Hook looks just as good bumping and selling as he did on offense. You know, then just get him on the gas to fill him out and you've got a superduperstar in the making.
  9. I dunno, man. One guy yelled out a slur. Seems like rock solid proof that everyone in the arena and by extension everyone in the surrounding geographical area is also a hateful homophobic bigot. Maybe it's possible to argue that any time you get 9000+ people together there are inevitably going to be at some assholes in the crowd, but I think it's a lot easier just to blindly pass judgement. Luckily, I live in Japan. I'm quite happy to be lumped in with the "knowledgeable, respectful pro wrestling fans" stereotype. Unless I go to a joshi show. In that case I'm probably getting lumped in with the "creepy perverts" stereotype instead.
  10. Settle down, thevastmajorityofusnetico special 6-person tag bout: Tay, Anna, Ruby vs Nyla, Bunny, Penelope. Settle down, Tony and Britt shippers, and asphyxiation enthusiasts, special singles match: Bay Bay vs Wheeler Settle down, Jim Cornettico tag team title contest: FTR vs Lucha Brothers - sadly not 2 out of 3 falls. Settle down, @Jijinetico debut extravaganza: Hook vs Fuego! Hope all y'all are able to avoid the spoilers until then!
  11. https://barbend.com/devon-larratt-arm-wrestle-adam-scherr-braun-strowman/ Adam Scherr (Braun) vs legendary Canadian arm-wrestler Devon Larrett. Scherr does not exactly come across as a likable fellow in the video.
  12. Another white hot crowd, another great pro wrestling TV show... And not only really very very good pro wrestling up and down the card, but also top notch Sports Entertainment during the Royale with Cheese. Wasn't expecting the crowd to boo Punk and cheer MJF, even in Lon Gisland. That genuinely caught me by surprise (and entertained me). Cody vs Sammy makes sense and should be excellent. Also: Cody's arm! Yikes! Loved seeing Hungee in the main event! Bryan's selling was so good. Love seeing Rocky in AEW, and the return of SUE! was maybe my favourite thing on the entire show. And the Ropongi Vice theme to top it all off!! This is going to sound like I'm being facetious, but I am genuinely looking forward to reading about whatever the various haters and nit-pickers find to complain about this week. I enjoy all of this so much, it's sometime really interesting to compare how other people experience it. Edit: @just drew got my back! I don't agree with any of it, but I can see where it's coming from. Maybe someone can complain about the Bucks wearing pink and black to the ring? No respect for tradition, those guys! Killing the business.
  13. Tony Kahn on Busted Open Radio, as quoted on some bullshit newz site or other: “Like we have a great audience right now,” Khan said. “People get so caught up in like micro trends. I’ll give you a great example. Like there are a lot of people out on Black Friday and also on Thanksgiving Eve. And so for Dynamite in particular, I was just getting DVR numbers back today. And the Thanksgiving Eve episode, you know, a lot of people are out that day. And we did a great audience. It was by far the biggest audience we’ve done on Thanksgiving Eve. It’s our third show on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and it was our biggest live audience yet. And it wasn’t quite as big as some of the other audiences we’ve had recently because I think of the holiday. And then I got the DVR numbers back this morning and it was the most watched episode when you factor in the DVR in a long time. So with that plus seven lift, the Thanksgiving Eve episode was a huge, huge, huge rating success. And, you know, a lot of times people get so caught up in these trends, the show this week, finished third on cable and that’s massive for us. Anytime we finished that high, everybody’s very happy with it and our share was really, really good for the night. And it was a really strong number put up this week. And the fact is, there are tons of people growing up on AEW. Anytime I come on with you guys like all the aggregation sites will pick it up and pull the quotes out and look for anything juicy to say and often they’ll intentionally take the stuff out of context. They probably won’t use this quote because it talks about what they do. So I’m guessing this won’t make it onto the aggregation sites because it’s actually a very process oriented quote describing the process of running a wrestling aggregation site and taking people out of context, which is an art that they’ve mastered. So in this case, I think the fans, there’s a lot of people that have grown up with GCW, as maybe their third alternative. There’s a lot of people that have grown up with AEW. And we have taken a place in the wrestling universe that didn’t exist for a long time. There wasn’t a viable second national company with all due respect to the other companies that have been out there or were out there trying to fill that space. For a long time, there hasn’t been a viable national alternative. Nothing that’s ever gotten the kind of penetration we have, you know, on great channels like TNT and TBS, since the death of WCW, over 20 years ago. So the fans have been waiting over 20 years ago, for a time like this and now, Dynamite has been on over two years, we’re going on year three, as a company with AEW. There’s a lot of people that watch AEW and instead of getting caught up on whether the number goes up by .02 or .03 each week, I think I don’t want to lose the forest for the trees. We have a lot of fans, and they’re pro wrestling fans. One of the mistakes WCW did is they had a great audience with pro wrestling, on television, and then around 97, the WWF I guess around maybe late 96, the WWF started doing stuff that was just as good or better. And they had great main event talent, but they weren’t the biggest names yet and they built those people up. And you saw slowly but surely, the fans responded to what was great pro wrestling, and then WCW instead of responding to that by continuing on doing more great pro wrestling, maintaining the great audience and base that they had, they got away from it. And I don’t want to do that. So one thing you can always count on with AEW is if you tune in to Dynamite on a Wednesday, or tonight, if you tune into Rampage on a Friday like tonight on TNT, you’re going to see a lot of great wrestling, I promise, I’m not going to make it a whole show with talking. The only show I can ever think of where a large percentage of the total volume of the show was taken up with the talking is the First Dance, which was a very, very special case. And I don’t think anybody there that night or anybody that watched it was upset that one time a few months ago when a lot of the show was [talking] but for the most part I would say literally 99% of the time on our TV shows, you can count on a lot of great wrestling. And for me as a fan that would always be enough to get me to support a company because if I knew that a few times a week, I could tune in and I was gonna see great wrestling matches and wrestlers I cared about that means so much. And for a long time people didn’t have that, and at least not consistently. And I think there have been times in the last two decades where WWE did offer that consistently and has had good runs of doing that but when AEW started there was a reason why the fans [clamored for it] and there’s a reason why I think we’ve had the success we’ve had and it’s because of the fans and it’s because there’s a huge appetite in this country for pro wrestling and great pro wrestling matches every week. Khan was asked about people getting caught up on the live TV numbers when there are several ways to watch AEW: “Ratings are a huge piece of it and it is a big deal when they come out the next day but you know, there is some context that goes into it. You really need to watch the next week as the DVR numbers come in. So for the Thanksgiving Eve episode, the DVR numbers tell a really interesting story that there was a ton of delayed viewing but people did catch up on the show and they really wanted to see it and it ended up being our most watched show of the month…”
  14. Yeah, I know! Right? It's so easy! It seems like Tony Khan doesn't even realize that all he needs to do is cater specifically to the very narrow tastes of every single person with a keyboard and internet access. If he did that, surely ratings would skyrocket. Oh well, guess we'll have to suffer through more weeks of Punk and Bryan wrestling on free TV and other lame stuff like that.
  15. The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers cartoon on tubi or whatever is absolutely heinous. Just a f'n travesty. Aggressively anti-funny. I LOVED the comics when I was in high school. Wildly inventive and subversive. The gender and sexual politics and so on were very much of their time, but if you can get past that the comics are still pretty entertaining today, and the art work is often excellent as well. And Woody Harrelson, John Goodman, and Pete Davidson are all capable of being very funny and have all been in some stuff that I liked a lot. So, my hopes were high. The cartoon is just utterly, irredeemably wrong-headed, mean-spirited, and relentlessly lowest common denominator. Heartbreaking. I got through one and a half episodes before tapping out forever. I think the people who made it felt like it would be hilarious to really lean into the "of it's time" stuff. Yeesh. I should have listened to @thee Reverend Axl Future when he warned us all off of this garbage On the upside, tubi does have this: https://tubitv.com/series/300005691/the-best-of-the-carol-burnett-show?start=true so I'm still happy I went there to check out the lousy cartoon, because it lead me to a motherload of nostalgic laughs anyway.
  16. I really, really, really hope the new AAA Mega Champion gets a match in AEW against Kenny once Kenny is all healed up. I really really really hope he comes to visit AEW regardless. The new champ is:
  17. I was there live, in the building, for this one! Last show of Winter Navigation 2005. My first trip to Japan, with my girlfriend at the time who is now my wife and the mother of our two children. The sound system in the Yokohama gym was awesomely, deafeningly loud. When Misawa's theme hit and I started screaming MI! SA! WA! you couldn't so much hear every other person in the arena screaming it, as you could feel it. It was awesome. I 100 percent literally got goosebumps. Now, I am happy to be able to say I was there in person, but I remember feeling a little bit mad that Misawa lost the match, first time I ever saw him live, and to make things worse an "outsider" got the pin! I also remember being a bit bummed out that in the Genichiro Tenryu & Shiro Koshinaka vs Junji Izumida & Kenta Kobashi match, they were obviously holding out on giving us a full-on Tenryu vs Kobashi brawl in order to build anticipation for a future singles match (which I believe actually never happened). On the upside, at least I got to see Misawa, Kobashi, Tenryu, Koshinaka (and Nigel McGuinness, Tamon Honda, Low Ki, Bison Smith, SUWA, Scorpio, Akiyama, Kikuchi, Ricky Marvin...). Minoru Suzuki was on the card! (teaming with Naomichi Marufuji against Akitoshi Saito & Masao Inoue) The Main Event was Taue vs Morishima in a mentor vs mentee GHC title defense, which was awesome live. That picture is actually from NOAH's Budokan Hall show in March 2009, when we finally moved here (and the last time I was in Tokyo, if you don't include changing planes in the airport). Couldn't find any pics from '05.
  18. Well. Dang! Maybe they are saving 2 outa 3 for FTR vs LB proper. Perfect TV episode. Lots of fast, exciting action. First time I've seen Nese wrestle and I really enjoyed it. (friend told me his WWE gimmick was literally "he has abs" which... I guess, that worked for Rick Rude!) Best thing is they set up PAC vs Malakai and another FTR vs LB match for later. That's good TV!
  19. Even better if they made it 2 out of 3 falls.
  20. This brings up a point that is damned interesting, to me at least: Going by my experience, fandom in Japan, and pro wrestling fandom in particular, seems to be very very very different indeed from what it is in North America. I'm not any kind of educated expert in Japanese culture, but I've been living here almost 13 years, I have Japanese family, close Japanese friends, Japanese drinking buddies and training partners... I've taught literally dozens and dozens and dozens of high-level conversation students. Before Corona I spent a significant amount of my free time hanging out with pro wrestlers and crazy pro wrestling fans. Everyone who knows me knows I was involved in, and love, pro wrestling. I have had literally hundreds and hundreds of conversations about pro wrestling, and if those conversations involved any kind of judging (and particularly any kind of negativity or shit-talking) then I was talking to another "gaijin" wrestling fan. With Japanese fans, we talk about what we like. if they don't like something, they prefer not to get into it. Which fits in with my general impression of Japanese social life. As far as I can tell, the lion's share of Japanese fandom is about appreciation rather than about judging, ranking, bad-mouthing... A couple of times, I have sat with a Japanese wrestling fan who was proficient in English, or with a student who is really into wrestling, and had them translate wrestling discussion on, like 2chan or something. It's a festival of agreement and positivity. Small sample size, but: Shockingly different from what you might find even here on DVDVR, where people tend to be pretty civil and open-minded but we also enjoy lots of disagreement and trash-talk and complaining about how we don't like stuff. TL/DR: In my experience, Japanese wrestling fans are marks for their favourite wrestling and favourite wrestlers, rather than being marks for their own hipsterish opinions about pro wrestling! You seem to score a lot more social points here by being enthusiastic about a thing rather than by being "sophisticated" or "refined" with regard to how you appreciate it. So, Japanese fans are more into "appreciating" than "judging." Not saying it's better (or worse). It is definitely different.
  21. Here's a navel-gazer for ya: If you were in Ronnie Garvin's shoes in 1987, knowing what we all know now, would you have said yes to the world title run? I mean, for the rest of your life you could legitimately claim that you were NWA World Heavyweight Champion, that you beat Flair for the belt, that you main evented Starrcade going up against Survivor Series... You could have a picture of yourself wearing the 20 pounds of gold on your living room wall as a conversation piece... Or if you are a more humble person, you'd still have that memory of the crowd marking out and all the boys coming to the ring to celebrate with you. But, at the same time, you'd be remembered as (one of) the worst NWA champion(s) of all time, everybody who really knows wrestling would be well aware that it was kind of a nothing reign just to set up a Flair win at Starrcade... I'd guess most of us would have said yes. Probably jumped at the chance. Better to have been a placeholder world champion for two months than never have been there at all, right? And Garvin was 42 at that time, so it must have felt like that was his one and only chance at it. I remember my girlfriend at the time really marking out for Garvin's win. I think the build to it was pretty darned good, with Garvin training so hard. They may have built some "one and only chance real-life feeling into it as well.
  22. This is an interesting take. I liked the whole show, but as I said: I didn't feel like I needed to see a flaming table spot. It isn't "a Cody thing" for me, in this case, and it certainly wasn't any kind of issue with the technical execution of the spot (though I can see elements of both of those elsewhere in this thread). For me personally, and I'd assume it's true for others, I just don't like seeing pro wrestlers take wildly unnecessary risks for relatively limited pay-offs. It's the same issue I had with the finish to Blood & Guts, and Exploding Ring. Even if the camera angle on Jericho 's cage bump had been perfect, I think I would have enjoyed the match a lot more if it had ended inside the cell. Even if the explosion had been spectacular, I think Mox and Kenny could have put on a great match without it. You know what I mean? I don't think that this is a case of "the younger audience" not liking what you like, considering that I am 56 years old. I just don't like that level of risk taking. I'm worried that someone is really going to get hurt, badly, some day in an AEW match. Also: I've seen Foley take a bump off the cell. I've seen Onita work in an exploding ring. Any attempt to replicate that... is going to look like "an attempt to replicate that." Any attempt to top it is doomed to fail because when you are competing with sacred memories you cannot win. So, I just don't feel like the pay-off can justify the risk. I have no equivalent comparison for flaming tables... What would the apt comparison be, here? My other issue with the spot was a "why now" issue. No pun intended, but Cody vs Andrade did not feel heated enough to justify that spot. Why wouldn't you save something that insane for a blow off to a major blood feud on a PPV? You have answered that question, though. It wasn't a "why now" but rather a "why here"? I hadn't considered the location/Cody's hometown/this is where he did his cage moonsault... So that part of it makes more sense to me now. Thanks! Still, while I love almost everything about AEW, I sure wish they'd go to the Attitude Era Big Stunts well less often. That is a "me thing" though. It's cool that you, and others, mark out for that stuff. AEW gives me loads of wrestling comedy, relatable characters, highly technical wrestling, Japanese guest stars, and on and on that I love but that aren't for everyone. So, I guess it would be churlish of me to complain too much about massive contrived stunt bumps that other people love but aren't my cup of tea.
  23. I flat-out love participating in Secret Santo. I have had an absolute blast every time I have participated. I learned about some great matches, revisited some old favourites, even had some fun thinking about why I didn't like certain matches. And, it is a ton of fun to pick matches for other people, trying to figure out something they will love or find something crazy or unusual... and to read everyone's reviews, recaps, and thoughts. Sadly I will not have adequate time to participate fully this round. I will lurk here, read as close to everything as I am able, maybe even chime in with a comment or two. But I need to skip this round. I'd absolutely urge anyone who A) is interested and B) will have time, to participate. It really is a lot of fun.
  24. AEW YouTube wrestler of the year: Legit Leyla Hirsch. I mark out any time she's on Dark or Elevation, which is pretty much my sole criterion for these awards. Male AEW YouTube wrestler of the year: JD Drake. Our lad has come a long way in 2021. He's consistently very entertaining and enjoyable to watch. I want him to go back to his old Dick Murdoch style gear some day, even though I like his current look as part of The Wingmen. AEW YouTube tag team of the year: Bear Country! And people complain that there are no fat guys in AEW. AEW has the best fat guys! Love to see them slowly and organically making their way up the ladder. AEW YouTube match of the year: Bryan vs MiSu. Could end up being "The Best Match Ever to Debut on YouTube" when all is said and done. Rampage Buy-In currently has over 1.3 million views! I wonder how many of those are from folks like me who have watched it over a dozen times.
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