ReiseReise

Not sure, if he was with WWE we would speculate about him being instructed to tow the company line. The excerpt has a weird feel to it.

It's gonna be Cody Rhodes!

... or imagine him running up the tab, you'll probably end up paying a 141 2/3 % tip...

I would say that 97 was the first time the "Final Group" mattered, with three of the last four eliminations being "phantom eliminations". 2001 had important final three, 2002 kinda had final four if iirc. After that it mostly final four, sometimes final six. Says a lot about this year's Rumble, if you ask me. Especially if you go Final Six.

Tomato Scampi is right around the corner, it's our own damned fault if we give them those ideas...

OK, so the thread is getting locked again soon, right? I would say the best food-related Wrestler was and will be Curry Man, right down to the amazing outfit.

Great achievement for Nadal. Will be interesting to see if he can win Roland Garros once more. I will refrain from singing any swan songs, mainly because I'm always wrong regarding all of the Big Three.

I 'm amazed that 50 matches a year is considered full-time schedule nowadays. Not taking any sides, just saying less than one match a week seems pretty part time to me.

Greatest shit eating grin in sumo today. Deserving promotion, now that it's official it has to be said. Oldest active Rikishi Hanakaze-well not anymore- retired aged 51. He was in Sumo for almost 36 years, with only 13 absences. Highest rank was Sandanme 18, which he reached in 2003. He will work at a chanko restaurant, from what I gather. Godspeed, Hanakaze... Or Yamaguchi-San.

This fucking song is so awful. I even liked the stuff like the RTC WARNING or the Diesel Truck sound entrance better.

Mitakeumi handily defeated a visibly banged up Terunofuji to win the tournament. During the Yusho interview, the interviewer announced that their would be a special convention of the sumo elders. This means they will promote Mitakeumi to Ozeki. He couldn't hide a smile and needed a moment before he could reply. A really good moment. Mitakeumi is the first Ozeki from Nagano Prefecture in 227 years, his predecessor was the legendary Raiden Tameemon, who is almost a mythical Sumo superhero of the late 18th, early 19th century. Abi gets his second 12-3 Jun-Yusho in a row. My personal favourite Ura won his final match, getting a really good kachi koshi at career high Maegashira 2 east.

With how chaotic WWE is, I fully expect Vince hearing Columbo in any way to be the catalyst for the return of the WBF. With Vince trying to recrute Franco Columbo, who died in 2019. Kind of like the production meeting for the Radioactive Man Movie in the Simpsons episode. What a great episode that was *sigh

Ooooh, ok. Thanks for putting some context to this. I was really weirded out by it. This was - seemingly - from a tournament for a "honorary prize" sponsored by a newspaper (AZ = Abendzeitung, should translate to evening news(paper)). The tournament took place in Karlsruhe, which is way down to the South of today's Germany, close to the French border, and very close to the Saarland region, which was an independent micronation back then (the tournament was held in April 1954. I would have loved to see if the poster had more information, but as it is I'm amazed for - judging from my little knowledge I have about old school European wrestling - Karlsruhe and the region are not traditional wrestling hotbeds, and it's hard to imagine French catch influences being at work during those times.

As I'm mentally preparing for a booster shot, here is a rundown off where we are at right now, heading into the final day: Mitakeumi leads the Basho with a record of 12-2. He might be able to get Ozeki thanks to his tournament. In second place are 3 Rikishi, all at 11-3: Terunofuji, Abi and Kotonowaka. The Torikumi for senshuraku is not yet published, but it's highly likely we'll get Abi vs Kotonowaka and Mitakeumi vs Terunofuji tomorrow. Should Terunofuji win the very final match of the tournament, we could therefore get a three men ketteisen. Terunofuji looks quite banged up (knees) and today probably didn't help, with a bad landing when getting pushed off the dohyo by Abi. Mitakeumi seems mostly very solid, two very bad losses, otherwise dominant over his opponents. Their matchup tomorrow statistically favors the Yokozuna, who won their last seven matches in a row. Mitakeumi's tactical approach will be interesting. Abi faced Mitakeumi and Terunofuji, going 1-1. He beat Takanosho, aswell as a few Maegashira rank 5 or higher. Kotonowaka is kind of the odd-man-out, not having faced other contenders so far, so it's hard to predict how he will fare tomorrow. He has had a good schedule for a "Yusho sneak". At Maegashira 14 he only today faced a sanyaku opponent in afromentioned Sekiwake Takanosho, his other "high" rank opponents being M3 Tamawashi and M7 Takarafuji. His other opponents were all rank 11 or lower.

The Foto is great, but tweet kind of confuses me. Why single out the word Ringkämpfe? The poster says "Freestyle (Freistil, as opposed to greco roman) Professional (Berufs-) Wrestling (Ringkampf, Ringkämpfe Plural)" in German, why focus on the "Ringkämpfe" and the personal history of Gotch being a Holocaust survivor? Am I missing context?

Now, now... at least the pilots had already made the sacrifice.

Definitely, multiple spectacular bouts a day and some interesting developments so far. I sure hope it'll stay that way til the end, the last few Basho tended to fall a little flat at the end.

I really hate this idiotic company.

Mitakeumi and Terunofuji are in the lead after 10 days with 9 wins each. They are already starting to mix up the schedule a bit, it's Mitakeumi vs Shodai later on today. Abi is still in the hunt with an 8-2 score and might get matched with both leaders aswell in the remaining days.

Yeah, Watts switched between DiBias and DiBiase, although it is not as evident as with Doogan/ Duggan.

I don't like the modern plunder street fight matches. I don't think blood/blading hurts matches, but sucky apronside table bumps, kendo sticks and hours of setting up shit just sucks imo.

I think that you do a very good job at trying to differiantiate and try to see all sides here. You are a better person than me for it. Maybe I don't know enough about the political climate in Australia, especially regarding visa and immigration politics. Since I'm a guy on a message board I still have an opinion, though... I thought the major issue behind the revoked visa was that Djokovic (or his agent) either provided false information or outright lied in the documents to obtain a visa, though. Which imo is reason enough to revoke a visa even without the whole anti-vaxx discussion. Also, I won't feel any sympathy for Djokovic. It's an opinion, but with all the stuff surrounding his "medical exemption", I'm 100% sure he and probably the Serbian Ministry for Public Health forged documents in an attempt to get him into the tournament. I'm very sure at least some of those involved feel like this, but nobody will outright say it because it wouldn't be diplomatic to go "We all know your story doesn't add up, Djokovic!" And as a personal note, although far away and never been to Australia: I took many restrictions because of the shitty pandemic. I'm by far not the man who had it worst during this whole thing, but like many people I was and still am OK with putting the needs of everyone before mine. Djokovic even 2020 held his own tournament series and subsequent parties with tennis players from around the world just for the sake of it. Of course a lot of people got infected, Djokovic flew home without testing. Guess who had the fucking virus?! And if you criticized those events, you were instigating a witch hunt, according to the guy. Later on, while people were still dying to the virus, he claimed Serbian people were protected against Covid because of "Lion genes". So yeah, that dude is no victim, he's a lunatic conspiracy theorist and major part of the problems that still arise handling this pandemic. It's his right to be an idiot, but the consequences are also his to bear from my p. o. v.

Very good calls. Sid (Justice) and (Kona) Crush had the same theme aswell, Crush's was a little slower. Edit: Forgot to mention, but Kid/PoP really blows my mind.

I recently heard a Mashup of the Taz- and Roman Reigns-WWE Theme. Now I can't unhear it. Great. Are there other themes which are similar like those?

A few good matches so far. Terunofuji's 23 match winning streak ended today, Tamawashi steamrolled him. It will be interesting to see how he deals with this.