Gordi the former AEW fan

At this point, AEW's roster is like @The Natural's Funko Pop collection. It's not that you already have enough. It's that you have too many and you know you have too many... but, c'mon, like you are not going to add the La Sombra and Tommy End ones to your collection? Of course you are going to get those ones, too. And keep your fingers crossed for the release of an American Dragon special edition. EDIT: Also, I'm pretty sure that, in Hawaiian, "Malakai" means "to make love or to make out" so maybe they are going to go with a Booty Man/Beaver Cleavage/World's Largest Love Machine type of gimmick for Tommy End in AEW. Luckily Dean "Ladies' Man" Malenko is there backstage to advise him on that!

Black Skull

Top 3 things on this week's Dynamite: 1) That entire bonkers ATT segment, particularly the Johnny Valentine shout-out. 2) The Bucks' Rancho Cucamonga Street Fighter gear. 3) The crowd. EDIT: I also wanted to add, just for the record: Hats off to the AEW production crew for not giving the idiot fan who jumped the rails at the start of the Jericho/MJF segment any TV exposure. And to, I believe, Jericho for tcob and not getting flustered.

So, you are also a homophobe? OK, then. Frankly, that's not even a tiny bit surprising at this point. I think I hated the "slut dragons" one more... but, yeah, I got a big laugh from the introduction of Planetina, and then didn't really laugh again for the rest of the episode. The attempts at pulling my heartstrings didn't really work, either. Weirdly, though, I feel like I wouldn't mind Planetina showing up again some time in the future.

I've always figured that it would be FTR. You had that set up in their first match where FTR were clearly heels and The Bucks were still in the process of turning and you didn't have crowds back and FTR didn't stick to their gameplan and so they weren't able to take the titles from the Bucks even though the Bucks were hobbled and not at their best. A very nice conclusion to that might be to have a clearly heel Bucks team that everyone is sick of seeing as champs lose the belts to a clearly face-turned FTR with Tully coaching them to stick to the gameplan this time, in front of a hot crowd. It'll take a little patience to get to that point, where damn near everyone hates the Bucks with a Just Drew/Goodear kind of passion and FTR and Tully have well and truly turned to the light side of the Force. You could also take your time and build to Santana and Ortiz taking the belts, which I think would be a lot more satisfying than rushing a change. I can't quite wrap my head around the demand for frequent title changes. The Bucks can still build a lot more heel heat to make the change even more satisfying. The crowds are going to be hot and tickets are going to sell well for a while just based on most people being starved for live entertainment after more than a year of staying home. There's no need to rush a title change. Then again, I have never been of the mindset that whichever wrestler I am currently enamoured with needs to get belted up straight away. As I've said before, guys like Tito Santana, Rick Rude, Ricky Steamboat, Mr. Perfect, Jake the Snake and Roddy Piper never got a world title run but we all remember them as being among the great and/or our favourite WWF wrestlers. tl/dr: I feel like it can be a lot more satisfying to really build up to a massive climax.

Yeah. This was absolutely great. I'll tell you something, when you give a guy Funaki vs MiSu in a steel cage, you don't expect that the match you get in return will be significantly more hard-hitting. That just doesn't seem possible, but... In terms of how they lumber around the ring, both Valentine and Curry are definitely less quick than a hiccup, I can tell you that right now. However, both guys have ridiculous hand speed, and they just lay in the blows here. Just full-force, unprotected, barely pulled punches to the face and body, and the only reason there isn't significant structural damage to Valentine's face is that Curry is making contact with the meat of the hand rather than the knuckles (most of the time. Bull also does a classic hard-way on Valentine, opening him up over the eyebrow). The psychology of this is excellent, and it is clearly explained by the commentator and easy to understand. Valentine has injured Curry's son. Curry spends the match going after Valentine in the way you'd imagine going after someone who did that. Valentine wants to work holds and grind Curry down. Curry wants to get enough separation to punch Valentine right in the face, again and again. That's more than enough story to make for a great match. It ends inconclusively in terms of the record books, but Bull Curry clearly gets a measure of revenge. The police drag Valentine away from the post-match brawl (presumably for his own safety). Curry is phenomenally hideous. He looks like if Joe Flaherty and the SCTV makeup department were trying to do a parody of an ugly bad guy pro wrestler and went just a little too far. Yet the crowd are 100 percent behind him all the way here, even when he loses control and goes berserk at the end. Thanks to @Phil Schneider's excellent new book, I know that this match is from near the end of Bull Curry's career, and presumably what is happening here is something like how George Steele became a beloved babyface near the end. Or, as Schneider puts it, they are choosing the Devil they know. And, like when Bad News attacked Archie Gouldie's son, it's easy to get behind even the baddest of bad guys when family is involved. So: White hot crowd. Valentine is 100 percent believable as the toughest of the tough guys. Bull Curry is 100 percent believable as the guy mad enough to go toe to toe with Valentine and come out on top. I just loved everything about this. Thank you, @twiztor!

@twiztor Let's see if this match can help overcome the language barrier for you. Considering you like technical stuff and bloody brawling, I'd have to say it's at least fairly likely you might enjoy this one. Two of the toughest guys in Japanese pro wrestling, Masakatsu Funaki and Minoru Suzuki, in a steel cage! If you'd rather something else, though, just let me know.

Mocha the hamster is more or less completely tame now. We are pretty happy about that, my younger daughter in particular.

How about: Meeting Bryan Danielson while wearing a Bret Hart t-shirt?

Y'all have done a great job listing the best AEW matches of 2021 so far. I agree that we very likely have even better stuff ahead of us as they move back indoors and go on tour in front of white hot crowds. These are not necessarily candidates for "the best" AEW matches so far, but they are all among my favourite AEW matches of 2021: Bear Country vs TH2 (Dark, March 25) (also vs Chaos Project, Dark, Feb 4) Bear Bronson vs Brian Cage (Dark, April 22), Lance Archer (Dark Elevation, May 12), and Jungle Boy (Dark, May 29) JD Drake vs Eddie Kingston (Dark, Feb 17), Darby Allin (Dynamite, April 4), Rocky Romero (Dark Elevation, May 13), and Jungle Boy (Dark Elevation, May 28) Serena Deeb vs Tay Conti (Dynamite New Years Smash Jan 7) Tay Conti vs The Bunny (Dynamite, April 7) vs Shida (Dynamite April 21), and vs. Natalia Markova (Dark June 4th) Abadon vs Ryo Mizunami (Dark Elevation, April 22)

Well, shit. That must really suck sometimes. I can't imagine what that must be like but it doesn't sound like fun. I'm overly ruminative by nature (prone to navel-gazing, as it were) but I think I have control over it, like I seem to be able to turn it off when I've got something to do. Luckily it doesn't seem to keep you from enjoying things that don't set it off. Like, say, Jungle Boy, Hangman Page, and Ricky Starks. Here's to you enjoying the things that you can, to the fullest.

Nice! Looking forward to reading your write-ups, @Casey My request is really very simple this round: Please do not give me any long matches. Nothing over 20 minutes. 15 or less if you could be so kind. It's OK if the video file is over 20, but if the match is over 20 minutes bell to bell my review will be me cursing you out for being an inconsiderate dick. Life in plague times has done a real number on my attention span. I'd prefer to be able to really focus during the match and do it justice in my write-up, so... Also: Definitely pretty please do not give me anything that is even remotely self-consciously epic in the sense that the wrestlers are apparently trying to get five or more stars from Scott Keith or Dave Meltzer. Brawls, big-man bomb fests, little speedy guys flying around, technical wizards twisting each other into pretzels, Japanese ladies laying into each other, blood baths, comedy, matches that tell a story, harrowingly stiff slugfests, Argentinian WTF-fests, literal giants, Mexican minis, very old black and white footage, shooty styley, classic southern formula tag matches, Survival Tobita, El Felino, Lord James Blears, Super Porky, Phil Hickerson, Pimpinella Escarlata, Brian Kendrick, Ashura Hara, One Man Gang, Kantaro Hoshino, Toshiyo Yamada, Alexander Otsuka, Johnny Saint, Koko B. Ware, Shingo... I'm up for pretty much anything and everything just please please please keep it under 20 minutes.

Cutler with the spray, Jericho joking about the crowd singing along to JB's entrance, "Matt Something," 1) You get your ass whooped. 2) You get your ass whooped, Vickie actually wrestling, Sammy' huge dive... WWE Dynamite... but most of all: Those glorious porn staches!! Y'all wish you had facial hair that cool. Goodbye-ah! And-ah! Good Night-ah!!

Bodyguard's birthday today as well.

Happy Funkin' birthday to the REAL GOAT:

I will never ever forgive them for leaving off Holy Demon Army, Miracle Violence Combination, and the Florida Brothers!! Yes, I read all of @RIPPA's original post very carefully. Why do you ask? Real talk: I'm pleasantly surprised to see LOD ranked so highly, considering the criteria.

Based on him saying "we are Tranquilos" I think it's safe to assume that is All Elite.

It's Wednesday night! We all know what that means! Let's see if AEW can keep the ball rolling after an excellent Saturday Night Dynamite and very entertaining episodes of Dark Elevation and Dark. As far as I know, there are only four matches announced for the show so far: Young Bucks vs Penta El Zero Miedo & Eddie Kingston It's time to once again suspend our disbelief as two guys who were never good enough to teach beginner's Krav Maga at the strip mall dojo defend their tag team titles. I personally am really enjoying Matt and Nick's run as heel champions; I'm absolutely looking forward to enjoying this match as well. If you prefer being angry about things, which is fine, may I suggest that you put yourself in the mindset where you sincerely expect that there won't be any Elite interference in this one? MIro vs Brian Pillman, Jr. for the TNT Championship Title This should be all kinds of awesome and is the match that I am most looking forward to on this show. Miro is proving himself to be a master of looking like an unstoppable monster while somehow also managing to make the guys he's in there with look strong by being able to hang with him. Think about how hard that balancing act must be. Pillman is approaching late-2019-Darby-like levels of being a likable scrappy underdog that is fun to get behind. This match should play fully into both men's strengths. Britt Baker & Rebel vs Nyla Rose & Vickie Guerrero Does anyone think Vickie is going to wrestle here? I'll actually be surprised if this doesn't turn out to be the AEW debut of Thea Trinidad, or something along those lines. Sammy Guevara vs MJF Nice to see both of these guys getting a singles match! They also match up really well, character-wise. It's pretty likely that interference will factor pretty heavily into this match, as well. I'm excited to see what these guys get up to before the almost-inevitable big brawl. I'm looking forward to Jericho on commentary here. And who knows, maybe the ref will ban everyone else from ringside and they'll just let these two guys go.

So episode 2 of the new season is one of those "theme and variation" type shows, and also one of those "take a sci-fi concept to its most ludicrous extreme" shows. Rick and Morty is good at both of those and they combine well. Last seasons Snake Planet/Time Travel/Terminator episode was along the same lines, and I loved that one. This one didn't hit so hard for me on first viewing, probably because I think about The Terminator a lot but never really think about the implications of making duplicates copies of one's family. Unsurprisingly, Rick making duplicates of the Smith family leads to ever-escalating cycles of insane violence. I found it more interesting than funny on first go. Time will tell if repeat viewings elevate it to Mr. Meeseeks/Rattlestar Ricklactica territory. I think I'll let it sit and marinate for a few days before giving it my first re-watch.

I also thought that Tay dancing with Aubrey was a pretty great moment. JD Drake vs Kaz was a really fun six-minute slugfest. There were a ton of good squashes today as well. Wardlow, Abadon, Hobbs, Archer, Tay... all of them looked pretty great this week (unsurprisingly). Do you folks think that Vary Morales was more influenced by Essa Rios or by Juventud?

That's a pretty great list. Out of guys I don't think you've mentioned, I might add Dusty, Macho, Thunderbolt Patterson, Terry Funk... and Eddie Kingston, who is the only current guy I'd give serious consideration to. He's maybe not known as a great talker, but the single greatest promo I have heard was cut by Archie "The Stomper" Gouldie in Stampede after Bad News Allen beat up Gouldie's son.

I'd have to imagine that AEW are going to want to milk the "Live crowd sings along to Judas" stuff until they have hit more or less every town they are going to hit. I guess you could work it in if Jericho came in on commentary later on the show or something... but my feeling is that there are still quite a few AEW fans who haven't had the opportunity to see a live AEW show yet, and who would like the opportunity to sing along at least once. Also, check out King trying to "gaslight" everyone here (I think this is from after the end of Saturday Dynamite, but they ran it on Dark Elevation today): Man, somebody needs to let him know that "comparing AEW to WWE is the most basic dingdong level of discourse that exists among wrestling fans today, and exists only for small people who don't want to take AEW on its merits." ? EDIT: Dark Elevation was really enjoyable this week. There were a few funny little things, from Team Tazz basically ignoring Luther to Eddie Kingston dancing at TH2. There were, indeed, more competitive matches than usual this week, perhaps an indication of what the show is going to be like moving forward. The main event, HFO vs DO, Blade vs Chuck (the Battle of the Low-Priced Steaks), Riho vs King, Gunns vs Wingmen, Wheeler Yuta vs. Karl Anderson, and Hikaru Shida vs. Reka Tehaka were all at least fairly competitive. I enjoyed that. More generally, AEW has been bringing in some pretty dammed good bumpers and sellers to do jobs on the YouTube shows. Zicky Dice, The Sea Stars, Jason Hotch, and in particular Chandler Hopkins, just to name a few. I wouldn't mind seeing more of all of them, and also Arik Cannon, and a few others. Maybe some of them can be put into a Bear Country/JD Drake kind of role at some point.

They wear suits and they’re like, ‘We’re cool’.” ? What more do the writers need to know?