Stefanie Sparkleface

Yeah, with Ibuki and Kaho out, Ice Ribbon's best role is Tsukka functioning as a bridge to other promotions and having their younger wrestlers come there to get more experience with their fellow younger wrestlers and steady veterans like Hamuko Hoshi, Totoro Satsuki, and Kyuuri that aren't going to be big draws or anything. Pure-J's going to be the same way; Hanako Nakamori and Leon might be a fresh match and wouldn't be out of place at the top of the line elsewhere, but the rest of the roster (Crea, AKARI, Momo Tani, Rydeen Hagane, Chie Ozora) are solid matches to help the younger talent grow by the fact that they can give them a weekly match where they can put in some time. Think of it this way, there's a ton of value in getting to go work a twelve minute singles match and work out the kinks at Kame Dojo against Crea before trying to do it against Mayu Iwatani, and Stardom's shows right now are too full, even with the exodus, to give them that sort of time. New Blood helps, but having a partnership with all of these other groups would be nice to see. I get the feeling Stardom would rather not try to manage a developmental brand, so why not work with smaller groups?

I'm not sure we're on the same page. If the younger wrestlers are going to smaller groups for experience, I'm not sure it needs to be "special". Venues like Ice Ribbon's dojo or Post di Amistad barely seat more than 60 anyway. If you're saying that they shouldn't be on the dojo-level shows, then fine, groups like Ice Ribbon do a larger venue like Skip City or 176Box each month, run... I dunno, Lady C vs. Totoro Satsuki there. Or Pure-J typically has an Itabashi Green Hall show each month, send someone to that. It seems realistic.

I mean with more regularity; an occasional appearance every few months is nice but I don't know how helpful that is. HOW WOULD THEY HAVE KNOWN?!!?! KAYFABE!!!

Basically, yeah. Dukes got beat in 12 seconds by knockout. https://twitter.com/ActionNetworkHQ/status/1270099762474356737 You can see Dukes take a bump on the "knockout".

Oh jeez. The Gastineau/Derrick Dukes fight still had effects in Virginia at least 15 years later. Okay! So in 2006, I was at a show as a guest. In Virginia, wrestling is regulated by the Department of Professional Occupational Regulation (which absorbed the State Athletic Commission sometime in the 1990s), but it's rare that the commission reps actually come to the show. You send them their cut, they occasionally threaten you with fines for something they didn't see, ob-la-di, ob-la-da, life goes on. This show, though, was in the afternoon and close enough of a drive to Richmond that they could be home at a reasonable hour, so sure enough, the commissioner was actually there. This group had a guy doing a MMA gimmick (it's 2006, UFC was red hot, makes sense, but he had credentials to pull it off), and he won his match with a rear naked choke. Easy peasy. No big deal. Except the commissioner FLIPS OUT and threatens to shut the show down. Why? Two reasons. 1) At the time - and I don't know if this is still the case or not - licensing for MMA was way more expensive than it was for wrestling, like ten times as much, and he didn't want people either thinking that they were coming to wrestling shows and getting MMA or MMA promoters licensing their fighters as pro wrestlers and claiming their MMA show was a pro wrestling show to have cheaper licensing. 2) The commissioner was the assistant to the commissioner alllllll the way back in the early-1990s when the Gastineau/Dukes fight happened, and remembered the uproar that happened. He didn't want wrestlers licensing themselves as MMA fighters and having fixed fights. So somehow that would have been prevented by pro wrestlers not using chokes or armbars in their matches, and by eliminating tapouts. Seriously, that was the solution the commission pitched; no chokes, no armbars, matches ending by submission couldn't be done by a tapout. Then WWE came to down like a month later and there were at least three matches that ended via submission, a tapout submission at that, and sure enough the commission backed off. But needless to say, that was a weird month. Damn you Derrick Dukes.

That is great. Stardom collaborating with groups like Ice Ribbon and Wave (if I'm not mistaken, a couple of Stardom wrestlers are in this year's Catch the Wave) can only benefit everyone. I'd love to see Stardom working with all the smaller groups, like Pure-J or Diana as well. Things work better when there's collaboration. Hopefully this will still be going on when Ibuki Hoshi and Kaho Matsushita are back in action, because those two would be great in this kind of environment. It'd be massively beneficial for everyone, really. Stardom's younger/less-experienced wrestlers can get more time and variance in working with different people in different environments (Ice Ribbon, Pure-J, and Diana's dojo shows are perfect for this), and Stardom can benefit by having people like Tsukasa Fujimoto or Hanako Nakamori come in and give some fresh matchups to the top of Stardom's card. The smaller groups get more eyes, Stardom gets fresh matchups, everyone gets more experience, it's win-win all around as far as I'm concerned. And I really do hope they work with Pure-J too, because Crea and AKARI are both great and I think they deserve more attention on them.

The other day I was wondering if Shinsuke Z Yamagasa was still wrestling. He is not. I was sad.

And Tony Khan started the Sleaze Thread! FINISH THE STORY COMPLETE THE CIRCLE, TONY, IT IS YOUR DESTINY

I vaguely recall him describing when he was out in Japan, how he went bowling with the rest of the Zero One crew, and Ohtani gave a trainee a DDT on one of the lanes. Or it could be a Mandela effect?

I wonder if someone can get him to tell the story about Shinjiro Ohtani DDTing a trainee at a bowling alley again.

Matt once shared a Greg Valentine/Berzerker match with me, and for that I'll always like him.

I think that's a pretty safe bet. If you look at the Heat over Spoelstra's tenure, he's gotten a lot out of talent that you'd think he wouldn't get much out of. I think about ten years from now, he'll go down as a coach on the same level as a Popovich when it comes to organizing a good squad. Pop had two decades of playoff level teams and Spo easily could be on a similar run aside from a couple of near misses (a game in 2015, a tiebreaker in 2017, and two games in 2019). He's either in the playoffs or a couple of games away, and to do that over 15 years is pretty incredible consistency in a game where you just don't see it like that. Imagine another 5-10 years of that.

I lost a lot of money when I financed Papa Shango, so I'm a little wary about fiscally supporting the dark arts.

I'm not googling that. That's how I get on a list.

In fairness, it's hard to stick to making coffins when you have to go wrestle five nights a week. It's like that guy at my job who makes tables in his garage and it takes him like six months. He doesn't even do a custom paint job like when Undertaker had that thing that looked like it'd be on the side of a van like a bitchin' wizard. We're being a little unfair. They did! He was a time traveler. (I am not kidding.)

Personally, I hope Vince's yacht sinks.

Members of the KKK obviously. It's hell for them!

Look, I'm white, I'm not Counting Crows white.

Flair complained about Rufus R. Jones, not SD Jones.

There's also some value in just letting some stuff go too, and not constantly holding onto a misdeed from the past. Take the woman in my avatar, for example! She played Michfest (a music festival with a significant bend towards TERFness) a few times, and in spite of repeated statements in support of the trans community since then, she still gets called a TERF. And like... People can change? People can have different opinions than what they used to have? Do we have to crystalize everyone to what they used to be years and years ago? I was a pretty awful person ten years ago, I hope to heck I've changed since then. So if I give myself that grace, why wouldn't I give someone else that same grace? If someone's still a deliberately awful bigot now, okay, fine, I get it. But if we're taking people to task for something they did in like 2011, I dunno. Maybe tap the brakes some.

They sure do, she says hearing your wallet scream from the distance.

Bobby Shane had Miss Sherri in the early-1970s as well.

This certainly explains why Tsukka mentioned that her return is a limited one, it wouldn't surprise me if she came back just to support Arisa's last few months in the ring and help make her final matches a little bit easier on the body since she's had some rough injuries to come back from. That's really cool if that's the case. Arisa is very good, I wish she got more credit for her skills, but she came along at a pretty down period for joshi. She did a great amount of work to help revitalize the scene and I'll miss seeing her, but she's earned her rest.

Mima Shimoda doing them for years as the Death Lake Driver and nearly looking like she killed people every time. She eventually loosened up so it was more like a normal flat back but there's a reason people stopped doing it for a couple of decades. EDIT TO ADD - Straight up murder version: https://www.reddit.com/r/SquaredCircle/comments/19bxvhy/mima_shimoda_hits_the_deathlake_driver_on_a/ - Toned down version, still murdery: https://twitter.com/SirLARIATO/status/1779948938487009402

Sorry, I need something to be happy about. Tsukasa Fujimoto is back tomorrow. WE ARE SO BACK EVERYONE