Gordi the former AEW fan

Does that mean... ...Vince is his father? NOOOOoooooooooo!!!

Die No Might seems pretty darned interesting this week: Miro v Sammy G, which... anything less than full-on greatness would be kind of surprising. Bungle Joy v A damn coal. Which... I think a boy vs a baybay is an unfair match-up but this should also be great. Penelope Ford and The Bunny vs Tay Conti and Anna Jay. Which... two natural heels vs two very likable ladies. Matt Sydal and Dante Martin vs Lee Johnson and Cody Rhodes. Which... Cody gonna start an actual heel turn here? Also: Interesting story about Matt Sydal. Apparently when his mom was pregnant with him, the sonograms seemed to show him practicing wrestling moves in the womb. So, apparently, he has been wrestling since before he was evan bourne!

Santa doesn't like that. Britt is on the naughty list. You know what she is going to get in her stocking this Christmas if she doesn't stop being the baddest b*@$h on the block?

I have a strong suspicion that they are going to make Hangman a bad guy when he returns. I heard from a reliable source that Tony Khan has licensed this song:

It's true that Johnnie Hungee can dash wildly around the ring, but for my money Cash Wheeler can dash wilder.

What did CM Punk say when Adam Copeland asked him about his sexual orientation?

Hulk Hogan's AEW name is "Orange Johnson"

In other words:

Straight outa Urbana-Champaign, my name is Tony I'm a genuinely nice guy, I'm not a phony I love pro wrestling, I'm not bluffing We went all in, then went double or nothing The more wrestlers I sign you know my roster gets bigger Brian's contract expired and I pulled the trigger CM Punk shows up and the fans are popping Gonna keep signing guys although the roster is whopping Don't you even start to think think that I'm done shopping When Steen shows up you know it's gonna be shocking Taking on Vince like I'm Don Quixote With Kenny and Chris, the Young Bucks and Cody Lotta wrestlers signing up because they know we Payed our respects to our brother Brodie Our fan base and roster just keep on growing Now we're also gonna pay our respects to Bret's brother Owen Ruby Riot came here to get exposure Because in AEW we let our wrestlers get over Here on Dynamite on Friday night We're one big family and we treat each other right So hey, Max Caster: Show some tact and class It would make me really sad to have to fire your ... *Tony S takes the mic away* Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!

I've got goosebumps. I'm at least 85% sure that the "Thank you for comming to Japan. Please come back" was from when Kingston, Fire Ant, and Green Ant came to Osaka pro in September of 2011. The Kenji who signed it is presumably my very good friend the Osaka Pro super-fan, and Keigo is presumably Keigo Yoshino, Osaka Pro referee and announcer who was also in charge of bringing in and taking care of foreign talent. If so, I believe I had a small hand in making that (I was sometimes asked to help with/proofread English language stuff. Me: You spelled "coming" wrong. Them: OK). Oh boy did we ever love Eddie Kingston. A whole bunch of Chikara guys came over in October 2010 and they were so obviously delighted to be there that heels often tossed us a nod and a wink when they were heeling it up. Not Eddie. He never cracked a smile. We booed him like crazy, relentlessly. He frequently teamed up with my good friend Kuuga, and Kenji and Kae and I would scream at them and they would yell at us and flip us off. "Please come back" was meant with 100% sincerity, if indeed that was my friend Kenji who signed it. It warms my heart to see that in the video and imagine it still has some meaning for Kingston. I can't find any pics from that tour at the moment, but I do have some from the 2010 Chikara tour, specifically the Haloween party/show. Kae (the goat), Dasher (who is working AEW this week!) and Kenji Stigma, me, and Vin. UnStable! EDIT: I just got confirmation (from Kae) that it was definitely us who wrote that letter. She remembers him being moved when they gave it to him. Also, that's my boy Mihara that Kingston is suplexing in the Japanese magazine at 1:00!

Stop the MiSunaga

That broccoli I ate earlier is paying tribute to Minoru Suzuki by "becoming the wind."

Look how happy everyone is. I am, also, so happy to be able to support a company that generates this kind of energy. I believe it is now fully apparent that there is legitimate value in running a pro wrestling company where the people working there are treated with warmth and compassion, are valued and respected as human beings, are allowed to express themselves creatively... That obviously played a major role in bringing Punk, Bryan, Cole, Soho, and others into the company. I'm still planning to remain "on hiatus" until October, but this specific stuff is making me so extremely happy that I could not resist the urge to join in on the conversation, at least briefly. It's just wonderful to see these people so happy.

I achieved my training goal for the summer.

With the latest Secret Santo coming to a close, I am going to take a couple of months off from posting on the DVDVR boards. I'll likely keep lurking, and I reserve the right to chime in if I feel like it, and I will most likely resume posting around my birthday in early October. Might make that my birthday present to myself. I'd planned to make it to 1000 posts before taking a break. Didn't quite get there. Thought about not making any kind of "see ya" post, because I don't want to make a deal out of it, but I know I sometimes wonder if a regular poster is OK if they don't post for a few days and I (perhaps naively) wouldn't want anyone to worry about me if I just disappeared. I'm more than fine. Getting my second vaccination tomorrow. My wife is very busy (she's a nurse, and often works at vaccination centres on her days off) as are my daughters (who are in prep for another ballet performance while taking care of their pets and working through their massive pile of summer break homework) but we are all happy and healthy and handling the summer heat and humidity just fine so far. I'm really looking forward to enjoying my local izakaya and hanging out with my excellent drinking buddies again. Anyway: It's a great time to be a fan of AEW right now, and it's pretty likely to become an *amazing* time while I'm on hiatus. If the current hot rumours turn out to be true then AEW are heading into crazy dream match territory. Even if Bryan doesn't show up, there's so much to look forward to with a new show and all of the recent additions. I'm so happy that there is a major pro wrestling company, with an international TV deal, owned and operated by people who love wrestling and respect their fans. It's an amazing thing. A dream come true. We are all so lucky to be able to enjoy this right now. It's been fun discussing AEW and other things here. Helped me, in a very real way, to get through some crazy times over the past year. Thanks for that. See ya!

@Spontaneous I hope the surgery went well and your wife recovers quickly. Good Lord the match that @Matt D gave me here is amazing. It's all built around Strong Man being hilariously muscular and Plata being genuinely Super-Duper Porky. Jon Andersen is a pretty impressive guy: Bodybuilder, strength athlete, wrestler, and legendary prog rock musician and singer... He is so muscular that it is just stupid. Like if you somehow combined Big Poppa Pump and Brian Cage's muscle and packed all of it onto a single 6-foot T-800 frame. Literally 300-plus pounds without a trace of visible body fat. Porky here looks like he's wearing the Fat Bastard prosthetics from the Austin Powers movies on top of his usual bulk. Almost impossibly large. It kind of imparts a sense of wonder about the range and diversity of pro wrestler body types to look at those two standing side by side and ponder them being part of the same tradition. (I also felt that way looking at Akebono and Yinling the Erotic Terrorist a couple of weeks back). The other men in the match are Héctor Garza (teaming with Strong Man and Brazo de Plata) , Atlantis, Negro Casas, and Último Guerrero. Which, wow. As Matt put it: Absolute masters. And they all do one or two neato little things, but they are really just high-quality filler around the spectacle of the ridiculously massive muscle beast and his friend the elephantine behemoth. When Atlantis, Casas, and Ultimo Guerrero came out, Guerrero hugged and posed for pictures with a cute little girl and I kinda got my hopes up that Los Guerreros de la Atlantida might be working face but of course they were the heels here. That was mildly disappointing because and only because I was kind of hoping to see Héctor Garza's heel act, which is wildly entertaining. Garza got almost as big a pop as Andersen when he ripped his shirt off, so he was still entertaining working as a technico. The rudos took the first fall when Guerrero and Casas pulled of the impressive feat of double-suplexing Plata, after which Porky was like a turtle stuck on his back, and after that Casas casually stepped on Porky's belly as he walked around celebrating the pinfall. That's what I mean when I say the match was built around the extreme physical dimensions of two of the participants, with the absolute masters doing cool little things in the margins. Another cool spot was when it took all three rudos to Irish whip Strong Man out of the corner, but he managed to get a reversal on all three of them. Andersen isn't a particularly good pro wrestler in the traditional sense. His selling and facial expressions are somehow both operatic and cartoonish, for example. But I very much enjoy him every time I see him in the ring. He both looks and works like an over the top parody of how a big man wrestler "should" look and work. And I mean that as a genuine compliment. In the end, good guy Garza managed to get all of the bad guys lined up side by side, supine, on the mat. He tried to pin them all, but wass easily tossed off. They repeated that gag. Then Strong Man kind of chucked Super Porky onto Los Guerreros de la Atlantida and there was no way out of that predicament for the bad guys. Simple, effective, and wildly entertaining. I'm sad that this is over already. It's been a blast. Thanks, Matt!

Nice! I have never seen that Danielson vs Collyer match. Hopefully I will get the chance some day. Strongman and Super Porky on the same team sounds amazing! Like something I'd book in Fire Pro to amuse myself. I am a huge fan of both of those men. I love the challenge of trying to pick something interesting for you. I think I gave you Fujiwara in Osaka Pro last time. Here's a nasty little gem: Fujiwara in Kana Pro. Teaming with Syuri. Against Kana and MiSu. A word of warning: Nobody holds back on hitting anyone here. I'm not kidding about this being nasty.

I think I am going to start doing lunges. I think that would be a big step forward for me.

Is it next Wednesday yet? I kind of want it to be next Wednesday already. Why not "Fyte for the Fallen?" Anyway, it looks like the card is already pretty much set and I have got some time to kill... Tony Khan announces a new live event I wonder if it will be a New Year's Day event? There are more than a few interesting rumour-based things I'm wondering about and I wonder if Tony Khan will get into any of them. The Elite vs. Hangman Page and Dark Order ten-man tag with World title and Tag Team title shots at stake I'm really hoping for that classic Survivor Series type of feel here, and as @The Natural has said, I hope they don't rush this match. IWGP U.S. Champion Lance Archer vs. Hikuleo Coming off an excellent main event, I'm interested to see what Archer and Haku's nephew/adopted son can do in the ring. Christian Cage, Jungle Boy & Luchasaurus vs. Angelico & Private Party With that look that Jungle Boy gave when Luchasaurus hoisted Christian onto his shoulders, I'm wondering if they are going to do some sort of slow-burn build to a match between JB and Cage. I'm curious who the bad guy will be in that scenario. Obviously, the eventual match has the potential to be excellent. This match should be fun. Santana & Ortiz vs. FTR Sometimes it's better not to get your hopes up to high, so you don't end up disappointed. My hopes are sky high here, though, and I'm not too worried about it. Five Labours of Jericho, pt. 2: Chris Jericho vs. Nick Gage in a no rules DQ match I'm actually a little nervous about this one. I guess that kind of unpredictability is something that Gage brings to the table.

I think this counts as an actual hawt tayk on these boards: Kenny and the Bucks acting like clueless insufferable dorks who think they are cool is the second-most-entertaining act in pro wrestling today (after Lulu Pencil). The "Belt-Co-Lec-Tor!" chant, the porn staches, the hideous outfits, the shoes, the headbands, the corny insults... they have an endless number of variations on that theme. Respect to them for going all in on the gimmick, all the time. Whether you like it, or you don't like it... Learn to love it! It's the second-best thing going today!