Stefanie Sparkleface

Kyuuri and YuuRI won their matches today (over Arisa Shinose and Yappy, respectively), so they widen the lead in their blocks. The new standings are: Group A 1. Kyuuri (4 points, 2-0) 2. Hamuko Hoshi (2 points, 1-1) 3. Tsukasa Fujimoto (1 point, 0-0-1) 4. Arisa Shinose (1 point, 0-1-1) 5. Misa Kagura (0 points, 0-1) Group B 1. YuuRI (4 points, 2-0) 2. Saran (2 points, 1-1) 3. Yuna Manase (1 point, 0-0-1) 4. Yappy (1 point, 0-1-1) 5. Asuka Fujitaki (0-1) No upcoming league matches have been announced. Kyuuri still has Misa Kagura and Tsukasa Fujimoto to go, so she's not out of the woods yet. YuuRI's in the same situation, as she has a bruiser in Asuka Fujitaki and a major roadblock in Yuna Manase left. A thing to keep in mind; Kyuuri has never beaten Tsukka in a one-on-one match, and YuuRI has never beaten Yuna. I have a feeling those matches are being held until the last match for both. Group A does still have a spoiler as Hamuko Hoshi is lurking as well, but she's going to need some help; she'll need to beat both Tsukka and Arisa Shinose, then hope Kyuuri doesn't win another match if she wants to advance. There's no word on how Ice Ribbon would handle tiebreakers, but historically Hamuko would be out of the running with just one more Kyuuri win. Beating Tsukka will be a big ask for Hamuko; they've faced each other in singles matches 41 times, with Hamuko only winning 6(!) times, the last time happening in 2013. Of those 6 times, 4 came in Hokkaido-based Hokuto Pro Wrestling, where Hamuko was inspired by being in her home prefecture.

I don't know if that's entirely true that the younger generation wants to throw the prior generation away, they just don't want to be told that what they like is cool by the prior generation. It's like when I tell my daughter that I like an album that she likes. I'm not supposed to like that. I'm old! I'm supposed to be lame!

They only have six episodes of 1994 Saturday Night, and it stops at the end of February. So there you go.

The Suns look like a terrible place at this point. Impatient, meddling owner, no real picks to work with, Beal's contract is a mess that they're not going to get out from unless they're very lucky. I don't know why anyone would want to go there unless it's a prove it sort of job. It's really going to be interesting who the Lakers actually pick up (since we jumped the gun a few days ago, Redick hasn't been hired... yet anyway). Pretty much every team with an opening seems to get rumored around Mike Budenholzer as well.

Meanwhile, Minnesota is utterly mauling Denver. Like up by 26 at the half. Sheesh.

People didn't really turn the corner on going to rehab being a positive until well over a decade later anyway. That was the era where if you were a celebrity going to rehab, you were fodder for late night show monologues. We needed at least a decade of TMZ/Perez Hilton to get most of society to realize that maaaaaaaaybe mocking people for having addictions isn't exactly the fix we thought it was. (Why no, I didn't just rewatch Framing Britney Spears recently, why do you ask)

Throw in a stop at a Buc-ee's and there might be some folks that take that deal, you know.

Man, whole lot of fun cops in this thread. Don't have fun in an unapproved way around here or else you're going to get busted by people who get distracted by rope colors.

I can think of no finer way to bring this talk to a close, then, than to point out that Reddit is a silly place.

Go back and rewatch. She's throwing live rounds right away, then after they're broken up she does so again. The problem is, Act can't throw a decent punch whatsoever, and Yoshiko can. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes, and this was a stupid prize for certain. Also, I don't care what AWG calls themselves, it's wrestling.

You're right, there had to have been something else happening, because there's multiple moments where Kyohei Wada (or Rossy Ogawa, who is sitting at ringside) could be the adults in the room and go "you know, this has really gone far enough", and they let it continue. That to me is why I'm alarmed that Yoshiko is always the one blamed for the situation, when there were clearly so many other people who should shoulder their share of blame for what happened (including Act, although considering her face got essentially exploded I can understand why people don't blame her). Similar to your point about how Drew Gulak has had multiple incidents happen and there had to have been a failing at some point for how it was allowed to continue for so long, really. Act was in no condition to continue after maybe 45 seconds. Kyohei Wada let the thing continue for another seven minutes. It was shameful all around. The thing that fascinates me is that I took a look at Yoshiko's Cagematch profile just now, and there are still people as recently as a month ago calling for her to be banned from wrestling, citing that she ended Act's career. Yoshiko hasn't wrestled since 2022 and probably won't ever wrestle again; Act literally wrestled today.

I actually have a theory as to why walking out of the ring didn't happen, and it's completely a "dumb wrestler brain" situation (meaning I think this is absolutely nonsensical logic, but I fully believe a wrestler would think it makes a ton of sense)... it was a title match, titles switch in Stardom on a countout, so walking out means Act becomes the champ. See? Dumb. The other great option would have been to just lay on Act until either she settled down and started cooperating or she gave up, but that goofball Kyohei Wada probably would've stood them back up and started the punches all over again. Either way, everyone sucked in this situation (except for Kyoko Kimura, who threw in the towel, and Ruby Soho, who at least tried to get Act calmed down).

People also forget the following things about the Yoshiko situation: - Act Yasukawa threw shoot punches first, and there were multiple punches thrown before Yoshiko responded - They were actually broken up before Kyohei Wada decided to let the match continue, even though Act's face was clearly busted up - When they tried to get back to a normal match, Act again started throwing shoot punches first and Yoshiko retaliated - Kyohei Wada continued to do nothing to stop it until Kyoko Kimura finally threw in the towel for Act, who screamed that she wanted to keep going and had to be physically dragged away from the ring Yoshiko beating Act so severely was obviously wrong, but I don't know what Yoshiko was supposed to do there aside from take more punches to the face and not defend herself, even if those punches weren't doing a thing to her. People also keep claiming that Act has been retired forever because of this, but Act's still wrestling today (albeit for Actwresgirlz). Like yeah. Yoshiko should've tried to do more to control the situation. She was clearly much more skilled at throwing legitimate punches. But at the same time, there were multiple chances for others to step in and try to deescalate the situation - or also, get Act to stop trying to throw legitimate punches - and people didn't do anything. A true "everyone sucks here" case if there ever was one.

When someone comes forward about a matter of sexual assault - and let's not get it twisted, what Gulak tried to do was sexual assault - I'm not especially interested in whether the victim was a good person or not. I'm more interested in making sure that the next person doesn't have it happen to them.

Like I was saying... Drew Gulak is a creep. Can't wait to see the justification from people about why this sort of stuff happened and should get a pass because they like his wrestling.

I wouldn't be too surprised if they decide to go with SummerSlam in Minneapolis over WrestleMania, just based on their booking trends of using the summer events to take a chance on stadium shows outside of top-20 population (Nashville in 2022, Detroit in 2023, Cleveland in 2024). Minneapolis would fit that criteria.

With wrestling, you can hire 100 people from anywhere and 99 of them probably aren't going to work out for whatever reason. With WWE's system, they hire 100 college athletes, cut 99 of them, and the one they have left over is Bianca Belair. That's going to be their case for their system working, and it's hard to argue that it doesn't.

Cross him off then.

Warum sollten wir das nicht tun?

Ice Ribbon's two-day Yokohama shows appear to have gone well. The big news first: out of the aftermath of Unagi Sayaka's successful debut in Ice Ribbon, she's already getting her first title shot! After bickering with MIO, Yuki Mashiro decided to settle the problem by offering both a shot at the Triangle Ribbon title. The offer was accepted, and the match is set for the June 23 Korakuen (which will explain why Mashiro wasn't in the Infinity title league, as the final is happening that day). Interesting to note, MIO is not being listed for the match as MIO, but instead as Mio Shirai. Unagi continues to needle MIO, saying that she keeps coming out of retirement and is worse than Atsushi Onita. Mashiro has been busy, as she also challenged Arisa Nakajima to a singles match as part of her retirement road after Mashiro and Makoto lost to Best Friends yesterday in a match that went close to 20 minutes. On the Infinity title league front, Arisa Shinose took a fairly big step in her career, holding Tsukasa Fujimoto to a draw, netting both a point. She even got Tsukka in Tsukka's own gokurakugatame at one point! Yuna Manase was similarly unable to do much with her first match, getting held to a draw by Yappy. The prior day, Saran snuck a quick win in five minutes over Asuka Fujitaki by wriggling out of a Splash Mountain attempt and turning it into a cradle, and Hamuko Hoshi reversed Misa Kagura's lariat into her specialized cradle which typically translates into "Woman's Obsession" but I don't recall the official name for it. Currently the standings are: Group A 1. Kyuuri (2 points, 1-0) 2. Hamuko Hoshi (2 points, 1-1) 3. Tsukasa Fujimoto (1 point, 0-0-1) -. Arisa Shinose (1 point, 0-0-1) 5. Misa Kagura (0 points, 0-1) Group B 1. YuuRI (2 points, 1-0) 2. Saran (2 points, 1-1) 3. Yuna Manase (1 point, 0-0-1) -. Yappy (1 point, 0-0-1) 5. Asuka Fujitaki (0 points, 0-1) Yuu split her matches in her return to Ice Ribbon, beating Yuko Sakurai and Sumika Yanagawa on Friday while partnered with Yuna Manase, but losing to Makoto and Yuko Sakurai while partnered with Mizuha today. Yuu said she wanted to return at some point, and Totoro Satsuki offered to do a trios match with Yuu, Yuna, and Totoro when Totoro was healthy. Somewhere, Asuka Fujitaki kicks a rock and mutters about being left out again.

I didn't need more than "I went in for a handshake and accidentally grabbed someone's waistband". That's enough to set off creep alarms in my head. Think of it this way. Think of a handshake. Think about how often handshakes are usually right around your elbow's height, if not higher. Then think about how Drew Gulak is a half foot taller than Ronda Rousey, but his hand - which he claims was for a handshake - was somehow low enough to hit her waistband. Nope. Not buying it. That's not a wacky misunderstanding, that's an attempt at a grope and he got caught.

Because Ronda Rousey is frequently a terrible person. That said, even terrible people can be subjected to creepy behavior, and Drew Gulak is a grade-A creep.

Softballs used to be balls of yarn with the leather covering, so they were literally soft. They became more like baseballs years later.

Yes. When he worked, that was how he wrote his citations, even when using pen and paper (he was in building code enforcement). It's called title casing. As for why someone would do that if they aren't writing headlines for a living, beats the heck out of me.

It's fairly common amongst folks his age. My father does the same thing.